THE RETURN OF NED BASLOW

A Writer’s Notebook

No. 49, JULY 2014

Watsonworksblog.blogspot.com

 The Return of Ned

Baslow…

Dear Readers

I’m probably as confused as you might be to discover I’ve been appointed by the editorial team Visiting Editor for this edition. This comes at a time when, fresh from my three weeks Union-assisted sojourn in Fuengirola (too many Russians for my liking), I discover a note on the living room mantelpiece informing me that the Wickerstaff-cum-Fernhaven International Festival of the Arts has been postponed till December on account of Councillor Gilbert Stokoe falling off his son Octavian’s horse and damaging his elbow and breaking a number of ribs. So much for outdoor performances of The Spectacles of Don Quixote, the centrepiece of the Festival.
     So the honour of being appointed editor is somewhat dimmed in the light of the mountain of correspondence that awaits me. Whether the Greeks (Odysseus, Menelaus, Homer et al) will want to take part in the Great Battle of the Titans, or Helen of Troy lead the dance chorus in the Tableau of Womanly Beauty down the ages, bearing in mind last year’s endless rain, is beyond my guessing.
     The Editorial Board, by the way, have lumbered me with this task because they in turn have been lumbered with preparing new editions of a couple of books they thought were at the end of their trail, but aren’t. So there’s not a sausage in the In-Tray and only a half-eaten banana in the Out-Tray.

Confidence misplaced

I thought, well, it’s an opportunity to spread information about the Festival to the thousands of readers of A Writer’s Notebook, particularly as many of our artistes are avid readers of the blog – Wolfy Mozart, Billy Blake, Florrie Nightingale, Calamity Brown, Endeavour Morse and Maid Marian to name but a few.

     How to fill its pages? Well, could blogging be another country for ordinary folk? Not a jot of doubt was in my head that family, friends and neighbours would rally round and contribute a piece, long or short, about the Pleasures, Challenges, Ups and Downs of Life in Wickerstaff-cum-Fernhaven. Not a jot or a tittle!

     My wife Betty, in the middle of her Open University studies, is too busy on an essay for her tutor Dr. Arbuthnot (expert on The Black Rat and the Brown Rat in the Year of the Plague). That’s just what we need, I said to her: What foreigners think of the English, edited down with pictures of England’s anti-heroes such as Judge Jefferys or Jimmy Savile. Of course I got an earful for belittling the study of history; even got a straight No on the theme of Academic Life and the Struggling Housewife and ever-forebearing hubbies.

    Betty’s sister Brenda’s Spanish husband was next on my list: a piece on what the Common Market has done for Spain, Roderigo. He said he’d prefer to do something on bull fighting, at which Betty shut him up by saying readers would be much more interested in the way Picasso rendering the sport. ‘Picasso betrayed his country,’ shot back Rod. The look in his eye (I call it the ‘Franco gaze’) dissuaded me from asking why.

    Demetrius, owner of the local chippie, replied to my request for A Greek’s View of Homer that he was too busy trying to reduce the price of cod to even think about cartoon characters. My best bet for a contribution has been Joe Wilson, Captain of the Cromwell Arms Quiz Team. His general knowledge is phenomenal, yet he has had even less formal education than I have. I offered him 25 different topics, including the Flora and Fauna of Lathkill Dale, Monsal Dale and Dovedale.

    Readers of this blog, I told him, would not only be fascinated by an illustrated article on his specialty they would make the dales their next port-of-call. It was the wrong proposal: ‘If I thought I was to blame,’ he said, ‘for one more body trampling over my precious flora, I’d top myself’.

     I ended up with an offer from my 13 year old Benjie to pen a story about his guinea pig, Useless Eustace, that died in mysterious circumstances. I said I thought the RSPCA might object to the grizzly bits, but he refused to alter a word, saying they'd have to cudgel him with the Royal Charter to make him. Betty then subjected him to a 20 minute lecture on Magna Carta. 'Same thing,' responded Benjie. 'A lot of hot air!'

To the rescue

I have had no alternative but to delve into the missives of my contributors down the weeks. There’s been much to choose from, some of it sad, like King Harold’s reply to my invitation to take part in the Battle of the Titans.

Dear Ned (was the last letter I received from him)

Your letter warning me about rushing in to battle without a Plan B has been duly noted. But after Stamford Bridge I feel we have the wind on our sails. This Norman intruder on sacred English soil will get his come-uppance, never fear. He is a canny fixer but my Housecarls know how to deal with such people. If he tries that trick of pretending to retreat, we  know how to react (though I can’t quite recollect whether I’ve told the lads in so many words).

   At the moment we are easing our feet and consuming a flagon or two of Saxon ale at a village inn on the road to Burwash. I’d be very happy to give a talk on the tactics of war to your Women’s Institute, though as you advise I’ll go easy on the bloodshed.

Yours etc.

Well there you go: a potentially star entertainer facing an epic battle yet still with time to consider his humble subjects.  Harold’s footnote almost brought me to tears: ‘All the best for Derby County in the new season!’

I fear we are going to have a few squabbles among the musicians; and Wolfie’s likely to be at the heart of them (though his acceptance of a 25 Euro fee for 30 minutes incidental music, with a night’s conducting thrown was snapped up without a demurring voice from the Committee).

Dear Mr. Baslow

I hear on the grapevine that Master Beethoven has promised you his 10th symphony on condition it is performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and free tickets will be made available to him for the Tableau of Womanly Beauty. Considering his present state of health, it is a preposterous offer and is certainly making me think again about being the Master of Musique of your Festival.
   If the Emperor himself has the affrontery to suggest of my latest opera that there are ‘too many notes’ the idea of yet another contribution from Luders the Lugubrious will be more than my ears can take.
   Please write to Master B declining his offer and my own very best wishes for his health; but avoid any mention of your proposal for  us to play together ‘Four Hands Make Light Work’. These days my old friend hits the keyboard with the subtlety of a sledgehammer.
Yours as always
W.A. Mozart.

Among the heaps of post after my Fuengirola holiday was a rather bristling note from the squire-class gardener who has agreed to re-jig two of Councillor Stokoe’s back meadows formerly serving as an open-plan piggery, more recently ‘discoloured’ as my Betty put it, by rape seed. The folks of Wickerstaff were all for it; and the folks of Fernhaven against it. On the grounds that in Fernhaven at least two of Councillor Stokoe’s election posters were defaced, he used his casting vote to invite the famous landscape gardener Capability Brown (not Calamity Brown as I inadvertently called him) to render the rape and make Stokoe Manor the mirror image of Chatsworth, but without the lake, the waterfall, and that ugly horse that greets visitors in the courtyard. I have written to Mr. Brown to apologise and suggested that if he can spare the time could he plan a water feature for our back garden, as a surprise for Betty’s birthday (preferably with literary connotations).

     Talking of posters, I’ve had to shield the committee from the ire of Billy Blake who jumped the gun and produced a poster announcing the wrong dates. As I pointed out to him on the phone, best leave a space for dates and times until the local council gives its assent, we receive confirmation of a royal visit from Prince Charles and advertising space has been booked in Derbyshire Life, The Lady, Hello (they’re desperate for pictures of Helen of Troy) and Camping Today.

    Billy’s illustration also did not meet with the universal approval of the Committee. One member called it ‘weird’ and almost came to blows with Betty who yelled ‘Masterpiece!’ over and over again: ‘anyone but an idiot could see that’. At which Betty in turn was accused of being an idiot. I stepped in to the quarrel with the comment, Billy comes cheap: we can make a bomb out of the sale of his etchings. At which William Blake’s ‘masterpiece’ was given approval on a vote of 5 to 4.

The complainant has resigned from the Committee and posted some bitter comments on Facebook about ‘folks who try to improve themselves and end up nothing but snobs’, referring to our Betty who delivered some equally bitter twitters on people happy with their own ignorance and content to spread it like manure.

Signing off

Readers, the travails listed above reminded me of the Prime Minister’s idea of a Big Society. He should come and try it. There’s always somebody out there ready to blame hardworking volunteers: will they take over? Like hell they will. Leave it to Ned is all I hear, in my company or out of it: Good Old Ned. That’s what the editorial team of A Writer’s Notebook must have said as they sloped off to the beach at Broadstairs (or is it Skegness?) with laptops and mountains of notes: Good Old Ned will cope. To be honest, it’s been a pleasure despite my failure to get friends and acquaintances to pen a paragraph or two.

That, in my opinion, is the trouble. 140 characters seems to be more than enough for most people; as for letters who needs them, who writes them anymore? Well I do and I get some unexpected and extraordinary responses. After all, how many committee secretaries can claim to have acceptances from Nebu-chad-nezar, Odysseus’ Misses, Penelope, John Milton, Miguel Cervantes, Albert Einstein, Nurse Nightingale, Leonardo da Vinci, the Sheriff of Nottingham, the Chief of MI5 and Elvis Presley for one event, not to mention the rest?

Well, folks, there are letters to write. The team promises to be back for Blog Number 50. I brought six bottles of Spanish red from Fuengirola. Droppers-in at Yer tis, just down the road from the Cromwell Arms, will be welcome, but if there’s a message on the front door, SILENCE COMMANDED, it means that our Betty is at work on her latest Open University essay or she’s busy on the Internet exchanging messages about Fate and Destiny with Uncle Bill as Benjie calls him.

Thanks for your attention,

NED

 

CRIMEA EDITION/NOT

A Writer’s Notebook

No. 48, April 2014

Watsonworksblog.blogspot.com

 

James Watson

Friends and contributors

 

CRIMEA EDITION/NOT… WHY CAN’T THEY SETTLE IT  ON THE SOCCER FIELD?

 

‘What we must avoid at all costs,’ team supervisor Mr. Boychuk announces, ‘is any sense of…revenge against Russia and the Russians. Sport is all too often used to repay old scores.’

     Team coach Vera Sorokin dares to interrupt. ‘I think my girls understand that, Mr. Boychuk. They will play hard and fair, fair and hard, whoever the opposition is.’

 ‘Thank you, Miss Sorokin. However, it has to be admitted that the Russian squad may prove to be out of our league in terms of skill and experience. We must not resort to tactics that will bring the national side into disrepute. We must prove ourselves.’ He pauses, stares from face to face. ‘And that means we must, if necessary, prove ourselves good losers.’

   This is more than Natasha can stand, as it is for a few others in the team, including the captain, Galina. The voice of a Kaltsov rises above the rest: ‘We don’t intend to lose, Mr. Boychuk. We’re on home territory, and the people of Ukraine are right behind us.’

Sensing their strength in unity, the whole team shout their support, driving Boychuk into an apologetic silence. ‘Of course, naturally…we pray for victory.’…

 

The Russians are big, most of them as tense as the Ukys, and unsmiling.

 ‘If they call you names,’ Vera Sorokin had warned, ‘ignore them. Self-control is everything. Lose your rag and you’ll lose the match.’

The lines break; captains meet at the centre-spot. The referee tosses a coin. We are playing into the wind. Ten minutes into the game and Natasha has done a lot of running but has scarcely added to her first touch of the ball. The Rus are good. Their passing suggests a team that has played together often. For the last two minutes, none of the Ukys has managed to hold on to the ball.

Squad captain Galina is calling: ‘Hold on to it, control it!’ To Natasha, who has strayed well in to her own half, she commands: ‘Stay up!’

In the crowd, Grandma Kaltsov has risen to her feet and is waving her umbrella and fuming as she sees her granddaughter hacked down from behind. ‘Damned Rus, treacherous dogs – they deserve a thrashing, the lot of them!’

As Natasha skids on to her chest, the packed crowd in the Odessa stadium leaps up and down in a war dance of rage: ‘Red card, red card!’

The kick went straight into the back of Natasha’s knee. And here it comes, the sledging, the verbal tactic that seeks to drain away a player’s self-confidence. ‘How’s it feel? – pigtail! Khokhol!’

Natasha gets up, with a helping hand from centre-back Svetlana, who is about to worsen the situation with a swift denunciation of this Rusky in particular and Rus in general, until Natasha pleads, ‘Don’t!’

It’s been a bad enough knock for Vera to call for Valentina the physio to come on to the pitch, but Natasha shakes her head. No need for treatment. She limps a few paces, feels better. It’s agony, but she nods, waves away Valentina.

‘You’re a hero as well as a star, eh?’ comes the same voice.

The referee steps in. ‘One more word from you,’ she warns the Rus defender, ‘and you’ll be back down the tunnel.’

The Russian defender who brought Natasha to ground takes a few paces towards her own goal. Loud enough for those around her to hear, but just out of earshot of the referee, she declaims, ‘Bunch of Nazis!’

It is a chilling accusation because there is no reason in it. Natasha is as curious to know why this young Russian, her own age, in the 21^st century, chooses a term of insult so inappropriate; yet employs it with such passion.

There is a skirmish, the attackers and defenders so close together that the ball becomes invisible. One defender falls, one attacker falls. A poor shot, spinning wide of the goal, hits a defender. The Ukraine goalie goes one way, the ball the other, trickling between the posts.

Ukraine nil, Russia one.

Some divine justice! Natasha stares wildly at the heavens. I’m fouled from behind. We’re called Nazis and now fate makes things worse with a sloppy goal.

Sensing the imminent crash of morale, Galina races into the goal, picks the ball out of the net and sprints back to the centre spot. She turns on the team, but stays calm: ‘Don’t bunch, we lost formation there, letting them push us out of midfield. So remember Vera’s game plan.’

The crowd is roaring for the Ukys to get a grip; roaring and cheering, chanting and chorusing. Their Mexican wave out-does the Black Sea in an autumn storm. Their cheers seem to be coming from beyond the ground, from the city; sweeping across the great Steppe, thundering down from the Carpathians, foaming along Ukraine’s mighty rivers.

Stand still, Natasha has told herself, and they’ll get you. Big Mouth wants my scalp. So keep moving: weaving, thrusting, seeking out space. The tactic pays off. Natasha has latched on to a pass from Galina that has split the Russian defence.

This is the moment: it may never return. She has steadied herself. Defenders encircle her on three sides, blocking off a route to goal; so she swivels on one heel, dragging the ball around with her. She steps on it, stops. The defenders lunge, but this is the best back-heel in the history of soccer.

The ball shoots through the legs of the advancing goalie. Natasha is in the air, and the ball is in the net. She flies, she soars, and the team is piling on her in the goalmouth with screams of triumph.

   How did I do it? Easy. Just put it down to sheer genius; and by eating my fruit and veg like a good girl.

There are appeals for off-side and protestations by the Rus when the referee blows for a goal. It’s official: Ukraine 1, Russia 1.

Not a second to lose: emulating her captain, Natasha sprints back with the ball to the centre-spot, plonks it down, challenges the Rus: ‘Bring it on, Comrades!’

With Natasha’s goal, matters at least on this pitch have become equal. It has become a level playing ground between two peoples; Ukraine, historically the perpetual victim, Russia the perpetual oppressor.

Never again!

Corners are where shirts get tugged and torn. Natasha sees the ball hovering above the penalty area. Three bodies leap, including hers, and one arm, in the melee, drags her back so forcefully her shirt sleeve tears at the shoulder. True, the gesture neutralises Natasha. Keeps her on the ground as it was intended to do, but the attention she is getting is so focused that it is too focused. No one has been covering Masha who darts in behind the ruck. It is the sweetest of headers.

This is no miracle, but it is treated as such by the crowd: Ukraine 2, Russia 1.

All at once there is fighting. Masha’s leap has carried her over the shoulders of two defenders, forcing both of them off balance, one to measure her length on the scuffed mud of the goalmouth, the other to twist her knee.

The sight of the ball drifting into the back of the Russian net turns normal, sensible, highly trained athletes into warriors surprised by a night attack and desperate to make up for their negligence.

Arms raised and swinging, hands thrusting, bodies colliding, accompanied by yell and screech, bluster and threat, create such a confusion that it is impossible for the referee or her assistants on the touchlines to figure out who started the war, who decided to escalate it and who is perpetuating it.

Vera Sorokin is bellowing from the manager’s dugout. The manager of the Russian team is also bellowing, first at the referee and then at her players, then at Vera, who bellows back.

It is with relief all round, and not a moment too soon, that the referee separates the combatants. She gives them an ear-stinging rebuke. No one is booked, no one dismissed. But the teams are left in little doubt that if tempers flare up again the result will not be one red card or several but banishment of both teams to the changing-room.

Natasha emerges from the incident with a shiner. Her right eye is already puffing up, and throbbing. She has no idea who tore her shirt. No idea who elbowed her in the eye.

Less than five minutes later, the whistle goes for half time. As she walks off, feeling numb and just slightly groggy, Natasha is joined by Big Mouth, who seems in a jovial mood. ‘Sorry about that.’ She puts a friendly arm around Natasha’s shoulder. ‘Fair game, eh, Tasha?’

At least she remembers my name. Funny old world. Natasha returns the compliment, rests her hand on Big Mouth’s shoulder.  ‘The game’s not perfect,’ she says, ‘but it’s got to be fairer than life – right?’

‘Fairer? I don’t know. But it’s better!’

 

Edited extract from FAIR GAME: THE STEPS OF ODESSA (Spire Publications paperback; and Kindle edition).

 

Editor’s note:

For the second issue in a row we have to apologise for the absence of Ned Baslow’s amazingly popular correspondence. His sojourn in Fuengirola has resulted in an extended stay in order to recruit what he refers to as ‘fandango dancers’ for the Wickerstaff-cum-Fernhaven late summer festival, a perfect complement he believes to the top show, ‘The Spectacles of Don Quixote’.

 

 

KIEV EDITION - NOT

A Writer’s Notebook

No. 47, February2014

Watsonworksblog.blogspot.com

 

James Watson

Friends and contributors

 KIEV EDITION: Not…

Having spent several months researching Ukraine’s Orange Revolution of 2004 in preparation for a teen novel set in Kiev and other Ukrainian cities I felt the pull to put my oar in to what originally looked a simple tale of human rights protest. Then the orange turned to red. Complexity ruled; an elected, albeit authoritarian president was sent packing. Europe and the US dipped in their own oars, pontificating as usual about matters of which they had questionable knowledge. Russia was not amused; nor were Russia-leaning citizens south and east of the capital.

Then we are informed out of the blue that Ukraine is teetering on the abyss of bankruptcy: why has nobody in the European community mentioned this before? It’s all too complex for a blog which will be out of date the moment it is posted. Amazing, though, how the protestors stood the bitter cold all night, and night after night, fought off police and snipers, many dying as they did so. Shades of Occupy?

So in KIEV EDITION – NOT something that did happen and something that didn’t but surely might have…

 

A real-life journalist martyr

Little known in the West and long forgotten is the story of the journalist and outspoken critic of the government of the Ukraine, Georgiy (or Giya) Gongadze, editor of the online newspaper Ukrainskaya Pravda. In those days the country was ranked by Reporters Without Borders as one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists to pursue their trade. It still is.

    Giya disappeared on 16^th September 2000. On 2^nd November a farmer discovered a headless body on the outskirts of Tarashcha some 80 miles south of Kiev. The corpse was identified as being that of the 31 year-old Gongadze, murdered, many have claimed, with the approval of the then President.

Only in 2008 did the trial of three policeman, Mykola Protasov, Oleksandr Popovich and Valeri Kostenko, reach a verdict. Protasov was jailed for 13 years, Popovitch and Kostenko each for 12 years. The instigators of the crime remained, at the time of writing, unidentified.

 

Kiev: The body in the woods

Early morning, and to the north-west of the city, a man is calling to his dog. Yuri Semko has work to go to as an estate labourer, but every day without fail he walks the dog through the woods near his cottage. ‘Hey, Valeri – come on now.’

Valeri, his son, had been killed in the same week that Yuri’s black Labrador had appeared in his kitchen garden. It was starving, scarcely more than a skeleton on flimsy legs. ‘Strays,’ Yuri had decided, thinking of the kids who had recently walked into his lonely existence, ‘are my speciality.’

 Dogs, cats, birds with broken wings or missing tails, even a wounded fox once, they all seem to have tuned into a message carried on the wind: Try old Semko’s place. He never turns anyone, or anything, away.

And so it was a delight and a relief to him when three children appeared at his front door one afternoon recently, asked him for food and offered to do jobs in return for shelter for the night.

He had taken them in, out of the snow. Beggars. At first he had thought they were one of those gangs of kids that roam the city, stealing, breaking in to places, mugging folks. They’d slept in the loft for the first night. No parents, no friends. They’d run away from some institution. But then, he guessed, these three had been running away all their lives.

‘I’ll have to report it to the authorities. Or I’ll be in trouble.’

The bright one, the leader, called Katiya, had pleaded with him to give them a chance. ‘We can ’elp you round the house, Mister. Olga is ill sometimes, but Dmitri, well, he’s little, but he’s good at some things.’

Yuri had been persuaded. His only son had been called up for the Russian army only weeks before Ukraine had become independent. He’d been sent to the war in Chechnya. On his first day he had been shot dead by a sniper.

So Yuri had felt compassion for the Three Strays, befriended them and felt bitterly about a world that could treat its children so neglectfully.

‘I guess it’s either me saying yes, or you lot being sold into slavery. But if there’s any thieving – you’re out.’

Katya, Dmitri and Olga clean, chop wood, fetch water, help cook meals. In return, Yuri feeds them, shelters them, has bought second-hand clothes and shoes for them from the open-air market on the edge of town. Most importantly, in his view, he has begun to teach the younger ones to read, and Katiya to write.

‘If you read, you learn. If you learn, you advance. No one can make slaves of you.’

Yuri is standing now in the woods, calling once more for Valeri; and feeling upset and badly let-down. ‘Young wasters,’ he is saying to the trees. ‘Them skipping off like that, without a word. At least they didn’t steal anything, not that I’ve anything worth stealing. We were making out. Smart kids. Good company.’ He shakes his head. Melted snow is still dropping from the trees.

He had come home from work last night, in the dusk as usual. The fire had been lit but had gone out. The table was laid, but of the Strays there was no sign. That leaves just the two of us again, Valeri.

‘Come on, Boy! Come on!’

Whatever explanation Yuri has given himself for his young companions’ disappearance is wrong: it isn’t that he didn’t feed them enough; or that they were unhappy bunked down beside the fire; or that he bored them sick with his tales of the past. They had gone because they had been witnesses to an event. They had been chased away, and the explanation, at least in part, is about to be made clear to him.

‘Valeri, come on away from there.’ The dog’s barking is enough to wake the dead. Or rather, not enough.  Yuri steps off the narrow path through the trees. He notices the buds. How early they are this year. All the snow has melted, but snowdrops are sprinkled everywhere; and among them, here and there, are the first glowing heads of crocus.

At this point the woodland thickens. There are enough fallen branches to keep Yuri’s fire cheerful through any winter. He stops. Valeri races to him, then about-turns, charges back into a thicket of brushwood. ‘What’ve you got there, then – rabbit?’

There used to be wolves in these woods.

Yuri pulls back the bush, steps into undergrowth, and halts. ‘Oh my God!’ He reaches forward, pulls away loose branches from a naked corpse. ‘No!’ He wrenches away his gaze, shuts his eyes, for a moment never wishes to open them again: the body lying before him, its limbs tangled like the undergrowth, is headless.

Yuri steps back, jamming his hands to his face, almost trips over the branches he has removed. He opens his eyes. He wants it all to have been a mad vision.

Valeri seems to share the trauma of this discovery. He has gone silent, pants, mouth open, staring at his master.

In the early light, the skin of the male corpse resembles the flesh of mushroom, and like mushrooms it is flecked with streaks of earth.

Yuri gags, turns, clutches a tree for balance. Horrified at the sight at his feet, he retches, though only saliva gushes from his lips. His hand beats his forehead. He backs away, hears the pounding of his breath, sees it rise through the cold morning air.

Valeri watches his master, seeks a signal to retreat, to go on with the walk; perhaps continue as if nothing had happened, as if nothing this morning were different from every morning. He begins to bark.

 ‘Shsh, shsh, Valeri.’ Yuri gazes about him, nods. ‘Dumped.’ He gathers together his nerves. It won’t bite. He is standing over the corpse, reaches down, then decisively rolls the body over on to its chest. The victim’s wrists are tied behind his back with cord.

‘An execution. Here I was thinking the bad old days were over.’

What’s for sure, this body was not here yesterday morning; otherwise Valeri, on their usual walk through the woods, would have found it.

But what to do now? Of course, in a civilised country, you call the police.

 Yuri hesitates, for his first thought is – they could arrest me for this. I’m the only witness to my innocence. What’s it to them if they accuse me of murder, bang me up, execute me, if they end up with a clean sheet; crime solved?

Got to think about all this. Not got to rush. Keep a cool head, for I’m in trouble, no question. Which is worse, though, reporting it or not reporting it? Yuri steps out from the corpse’s brushwood grave. He tidies up the site so that from the path nothing can be seen.

He pauses, sorry for the dead man, racked by the callousness of his execution. ‘Poor sod, whoever he is, whatever he’d done, there’s no way he could have deserved such a dying!’

 Extract from Fair Game: The Steps of Odessa (Spire Publishing and Kindle e-reader).

 Regretfully the Ned Baslow correspondence has been held over for another month, but readers can follow Ned’s campaign to put the Wickerstaff-cum-Fernhaven Grand Festival of the Arts on to the world map of cultural excellence in previous editions the WRITER’S NOTEBOOK. Here are a few gems from Ned’s tireless pen: Florence Nightingale (December 2013), Inspector Morse (November), Marcel Marceaux (October), Vincent v G (September), Agamemnon (May), King Harold (April) and Capability Brown (March).

 THANKS ALL!

 

BANNING BOOKS, BURNING BOOKS

A Writer’s Notebook

No. 46, January 2014

Watsonworksblog.blogspot.com

 

James Watson

Friends and contributors

 

CONTENTS

Editorial: Bravissima, PJ!

Guantanamo: The Banning of books

Chile: The Burning of Books

A brace of haikus

 

Bravissima, PJ!

Regular listeners to BBC Radio 4’s morning news programme, Today, might well have thought they had been transported to a  different planet during January 2014 as the programme had been handed over to a new editor-of-the-day.

There’s nothing new about these occasional forays into the semblance of broadcasting independence. Usually the guest editor’s take so resembles the usual day to day content and approach that one fails to notice the difference.

But not with singer/composer P.J. Harvey’s editorship. As a measure of her innovative and utterly surprising stint, the Daily Mail’s outraged response was praise enough for something welcomely different.

Naturally the Mail spotted where P.J. was coming from, wafting in on clouds of double-dyed left wing prejudice. Forgotten, predictably, was the editorship granted to the new CEO of Barclay’s bank who took care to permit a flicker of blame for past banking  practices before proceeding to to inform listeners that the way forward was a garden of roses: pure propaganda reflecting Today’s own daily cow-towing to the world of big business.

The producers who opted for P.J. Harvey probably didn’t have the slightest notion of what they were letting themselves in for. A singer? Good idea. Educated, too; with a touch of the intellect in her songs.

Suddenly the Radio 4 airwaves were bristling with the radical, subversive comments of speakers who, in the normal course of programming, would not be allowed within a mile of the microphone; and that included the better-known: John Pilger, scourge of Left as well as Right, author of Hidden Agendas? Were we crazy?

 P.J. – your programme was like emerging from the ‘same-old’ and breathing in the fresh air of unmediated truth; for a few moments, dramatically illustrating the difference between what should be said about issues and what is permitted to be said. Alas, I doubt whether the editor’s chair will be waiting for you in the foreseeable future. Thanks for the memory!

 

THE BANNING OF THE BOOKS…

A recent edition of The Guardian noted that not a lot of books are available for prisoners in the cells of Guantanamo Bay. Those banned seem as inexplicable as most codes of censorship allow. Take four: Jack and the Beanstalk, Puss in Boots, Cinderella and The Merchant of Venice. Jack has aspirations: he kills an evil giant: could prisoners see something of Uncle Sam in this tale? Puss’s ambitions are brought about by his killing rats and mice. Sounds like pure terrorism. Obviously it’s a No to Puss; and, despite the Merchant being by the Bard, it does smack of anti-Semitism: best not to play in the hands of suspected Islamist extremists.

No need to guess, however, that Kafka’s The Trial gets the thumbs down, or Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, especially in the light of what happened to Bradley Manning and what awaits Edward Snowden if he ever sets foot again in the Land of the Free.

Some contemporary authors will be pleased and relieved that their work has been under the cosh. John Pilger’s Hidden Agenda really asks for the blue pencil as does, predictably, Lord Thomas Bingham’s The Rule of Law. Breath again George Galloway and Clare Short: you’re banned.

Which seems to leave us with an embarrassed Jeremy Paxman: his The English is permitted, though the same charity is not extended to The New Dinkum Aussie Dictionary…

Finally it is a mystery whether Anna Perera’s outstanding teen novel Guantanamo Boy (Penguin) is accessible, except under the counter, to young American readers. Any stories about how it has fared in the US?

 

…AND THE BURNING OF THE BOOKS

Forty years ago in September 1973. Democracy was overthrown in Chile. A period of arrests, mass shootings, torture and terror began under the generals, the most prominent of whom was General Pinochet. Forty years later, into the second term of President Obama, the promise to close the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay has not been kept. Further, as this blog’s editorial suggests, the American state is as scared of the content of books as the Generals were.

 

In this short extract from teen novel TALKING IN WHISPERS, Andres, hunted by Security, cannot resist returning to the house of his popular ballad-singer father Juan who has been arrested and taken to the House of Laughter.

 

As he reached the Via Rivadivia, Andres stepped back in shock. In his mind’s eyes he had expected to see the street as he remembered it – friendly and quiet, whitewashed, with the occasional balcony adorned with baskets of flowers; a sleepy street with blue-grey cobbles and trees casting tranquil shadows.

Instead, he witnessed a street under siege. Directly in front of him were a jeep and a military van. Beyond, in the centre of the street, a raging bonfire. He glanced up and saw blankets spread over window-sills like signal flags. There were at least ten soldiers on guard. Others were moving from one house to the next. So far there were no blankets hanging from the windows of Juan Larreta’s house.

Our turn, I think. A crowd had gathered in the street and Andres had no difficulty concealing himself.

Weak sunshine had succeeded the rain, kindling steam from the pavements into a visual echo of smoke from the bonfire. Juan’s bedroom window was thrown open. A second later – out came the books, the whole of Juan Larreta’s library, and Andres’ collection too, no doubt, hurtling through the sky, a rainstorm of knowledge, of ideas, of songs and poetry; flittering, soaring, smacking the pavement, sometimes shedding pages, sometimes falling as neatly as if placed there by a loving reader.

And the books were shovelled towards the bonfire.

Andres spied a few titles as they ploughed into one another on the ground: The Eagle and the Serpent, War and Peace, Neruda’s poems, a biography of Mozart, the story of the Beatles, the drawings of William Blake, Film Directors of Chile, a life of Bolivar and, to Andres’ momentary amusement, momentary grief – Alice in Wonderland, given him by his mother years and years ago.

Andres wanted to laugh. So the Junta is even afraid of Alice in Wonderland. One day I’ll write a song about this: ‘The Junta through the Looking Glass’. Yet he did not laugh. The scene before him of vicious and insane destruction was no laughing matter.

All Juan’s songs in manuscripts were being burned.

The officer supervising the book-burning called to the crowd above the crackle of the bonfire. ‘This, by order of the Junta, the property of all enemies of the state will be seized and destroyed.’

He paused for his words to sink in to the heads of his listeners. He watched the crowd whose eyes remained fixed upon the continuing avalanche of books, upon the flames, upon the pages curling, turning black, dissolving.

‘The entertainer Juan Larreta was a traitor – to the nation, to the Holy Church and to the name of decency. The Interior Ministry has banned the publication of his work and the performance of his songs.’

The officer waited, as though half-expecting a backlash of protest. Like the others, Andres silenced his opinion and saved his skin. Like the others, he felt cowed, ashamed, almost unclean.

He had listened to lies and he had not responded. He had not even whispered a protest.

The silence pleased the officer. He chose to interpret it as assent. Perhaps for a moment, in his heart, he had expected the crowd to defy him. Perhaps also in his heart he knew the lies he spoke. Yet he had won. He had declared injustice to be acceptable, and the crowd had let him get away with it.

Except, that is, for an old man at the rear of the crowd. He cried out, lonely, shrill, but courageous: ‘Larreta was a good man. He spoke to the people’s hearts.’

The old man’s words were as petrol to the flames. ‘Step forward – that man, step forward!’

The crowd was reluctant to open up for the old man. Andres recognised him. An Indian, who worked at the bakery down the road. Juan had sung at his grand-daughter’s wedding.

He stood forward, bare-headed, in a suit that had grown old with him. He was bundled, without protest, without words, into the army van.

The officer delayed returning his pistol to its holster. He wagged it in the face of the crowd. ‘Any more heroes?’

 

A brace of haikus

 

   EARLY MORNING WALK HAIKU

            A flotilla of slugs

            Heads for the allotments

            Intent on mayhem.

 

 

            HAIKU FOR TODAY

              Eleven soup kitchens

              In Coventry alone;

              Tory Britain now.

 

Our star correspondent Ned Baslow is on holiday with his wife Bette, son Benjie, twin girls Beatrice and Barbara and Grandad Barnie in Benidorm.  Hurry back, Ned! We have an email from Elvis that needs a swift reply.

 

Kindle editions (4)

JUSTICE OF THE DAGGER

The machines are yellow like the morning sun.

At first Muyu’s people thought them gods. They glowed, they glistened, they roared. No forest ears had ever heard such sounds. Not even the gunfire of the soldiers from the Distant Masters could match them…

How can young Muyu and his beautiful friend Lyana stop the hated soldiers and the timber companies from destroying the forests?

 Their friend ‘Greenboots’, whose book about their people’s plight has focused the eyes of the world on East Timor, now has a price on his head and they are on the run together, in a desperate bid to outwit Captain Selim, the Butcher in Shades…

 

‘Watson’s pedigree as a writer of political novels for young adults is impeccable…This is a powerful and intelligent book which uses its chosen genre both to grip and incite its teenage audience.’ Books for Keeps [5-star rating].

 

This was a Waterstone’s Book of the Month.

 

See more at http://tinyurl.com/ka7gbnd

 

 As ever, comments and contributions are welcome. Please email to Watsonworks@hotmail.co.uk

Thanks for reading this!

 

 

BANNING BOOKS, BURNING BOOKS

A Writer’s Notebook

No. 46, January 2014

Watsonworksblog.blogspot.com

 James Watson
Friends and contributors

 CONTENTS

Editorial: Bravissima, PJ!

Guantanamo: The Banning of books

Chile: The Burning of Books

A brace of haikus

Bravissima, PJ!

Regular listeners to BBC Radio 4’s morning news programme, Today, might well have thought they had been transported to a  different planet during January 2014 as the programme had been handed over to a new editor-of-the-day.

There’s nothing new about these occasional forays into the semblance of broadcasting independence. Usually the guest editor’s take so resembles the usual day to day content and approach that one fails to notice the difference.

But not with singer/composer P.J. Harvey’s editorship. As a measure of her innovative and utterly surprising stint, the Daily Mail’s outraged response was praise enough for something welcomely different.

Naturally the Mail spotted where P.J. was coming from, wafting in on clouds of double-dyed left wing prejudice. Forgotten, predictably, was the editorship granted to the new CEO of Barclay’s bank who took care to permit a flicker of blame for past banking  practices before proceeding to to inform listeners that the way forward was a garden of roses: pure propaganda reflecting Today’s own daily cow-towing to the world of big business.

The producers who opted for P.J. Harvey probably didn’t have the slightest notion of what they were letting themselves in for. A singer? Good idea. Educated, too; with a touch of the intellect in her songs.

Suddenly the Radio 4 airwaves were bristling with the radical, subversive comments of speakers who, in the normal course of programming, would not be allowed within a mile of the microphone; and that included the better-known: John Pilger, scourge of Left as well as Right, author of Hidden Agendas? Were we crazy?

 P.J. – your programme was like emerging from the ‘same-old’ and breathing in the fresh air of unmediated truth; for a few moments, dramatically illustrating the difference between what should be said about issues and what is permitted to be said. Alas, I doubt whether the editor’s chair will be waiting for you in the foreseeable future. Thanks for the memory!

THE BANNING OF BOOKS...

A recent edition of The Guardian noted that not a lot of books are available for prisoners in the cells of Guantanamo Bay. Those banned seem as inexplicable as most codes of censorship allow. Take four: Jack and the Beanstalk, Puss in Boots, Cinderella and The Merchant of Venice. Jack has aspirations: he kills an evil giant: could prisoners see something of Uncle Sam in this tale? Puss’s ambitions are brought about by his killing rats and mice. Sounds like pure terrorism. Obviously it’s a No to Puss; and, despite the Merchant being by the Bard, it does smack of anti-Semitism: best not to play in the hands of suspected Islamist extremists.

No need to guess, however, that Kafka’s The Trial gets the thumbs down, or Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, especially in the light of what happened to Bradley Manning and what awaits Edward Snowden if he ever sets foot again in the Land of the Free.

Some contemporary authors will be pleased and relieved that their work has been under the cosh. John Pilger’s Hidden Agenda really asks for the blue pencil as does, predictably, Lord Thomas Bingham’s The Rule of Law. Breath again George Galloway and Clare Short: you’re banned.

Which seems to leave us with an embarrassed Jeremy Paxman: his The English is permitted, though the same charity is not extended to The New Dinkum Aussie Dictionary…

Finally it is a mystery whether Anna Perera’s outstanding teen novel Guantanamo Boy (Penguin) is accessible, except under the counter, to young American readers. Any stories about how it has fared in the US?

 ...AND THE BURNING OF BOOKS

Forty years ago in September 1973. Democracy was overthrown in Chile. A period of arrests, mass shootings, torture and terror began under the generals, the most prominent of whom was General Pinochet. Forty years later, into the second term of President Obama, the promise to close the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay has not been kept. Further, as this blog’s editorial suggests, the American state is as scared of the content of books as the Generals were.

 In this short extract from teen novel TALKING IN WHISPERS, Andres, hunted by Security, cannot resist returning to the house of his popular ballad-singer father Juan who has been arrested and taken to the House of Laughter.

 As he reached the Via Rivadivia, Andres stepped back in shock. In his mind’s eyes he had expected to see the street as he remembered it – friendly and quiet, whitewashed, with the occasional balcony adorned with baskets of flowers; a sleepy street with blue-grey cobbles and trees casting tranquil shadows.

Instead, he witnessed a street under siege. Directly in front of him were a jeep and a military van. Beyond, in the centre of the street, a raging bonfire. He glanced up and saw blankets spread over window-sills like signal flags. There were at least ten soldiers on guard. Others were moving from one house to the next. So far there were no blankets hanging from the windows of Juan Larreta’s house.

Our turn, I think. A crowd had gathered in the street and Andres had no difficulty concealing himself.

Weak sunshine had succeeded the rain, kindling steam from the pavements into a visual echo of smoke from the bonfire. Juan’s bedroom window was thrown open. A second later – out came the books, the whole of Juan Larreta’s library, and Andres’ collection too, no doubt, hurtling through the sky, a rainstorm of knowledge, of ideas, of songs and poetry; flittering, soaring, smacking the pavement, sometimes shedding pages, sometimes falling as neatly as if placed there by a loving reader.

And the books were shovelled towards the bonfire.

Andres spied a few titles as they ploughed into one another on the ground: The Eagle and the Serpent, War and Peace, Neruda’s poems, a biography of Mozart, the story of the Beatles, the drawings of William Blake, Film Directors of Chile, a life of Bolivar and, to Andres’ momentary amusement, momentary grief – Alice in Wonderland, given him by his mother years and years ago.

Andres wanted to laugh. So the Junta is even afraid of Alice in Wonderland. One day I’ll write a song about this: ‘The Junta through the Looking Glass’. Yet he did not laugh. The scene before him of vicious and insane destruction was no laughing matter.

All Juan’s songs in manuscripts were being burned.

The officer supervising the book-burning called to the crowd above the crackle of the bonfire. ‘This, by order of the Junta, the property of all enemies of the state will be seized and destroyed.’

He paused for his words to sink in to the heads of his listeners. He watched the crowd whose eyes remained fixed upon the continuing avalanche of books, upon the flames, upon the pages curling, turning black, dissolving.

‘The entertainer Juan Larreta was a traitor – to the nation, to the Holy Church and to the name of decency. The Interior Ministry has banned the publication of his work and the performance of his songs.’

The officer waited, as though half-expecting a backlash of protest. Like the others, Andres silenced his opinion and saved his skin. Like the others, he felt cowed, ashamed, almost unclean.

He had listened to lies and he had not responded. He had not even whispered a protest.

The silence pleased the officer. He chose to interpret it as assent. Perhaps for a moment, in his heart, he had expected the crowd to defy him. Perhaps also in his heart he knew the lies he spoke. Yet he had won. He had declared injustice to be acceptable, and the crowd had let him get away with it.

Except, that is, for an old man at the rear of the crowd. He cried out, lonely, shrill, but courageous: ‘Larreta was a good man. He spoke to the people’s hearts.’

The old man’s words were as petrol to the flames. ‘Step forward – that man, step forward!’

The crowd was reluctant to open up for the old man. Andres recognised him. An Indian, who worked at the bakery down the road. Juan had sung at his grand-daughter’s wedding.

He stood forward, bare-headed, in a suit that had grown old with him. He was bundled, without protest, without words, into the army van.

The officer delayed returning his pistol to its holster. He wagged it in the face of the crowd. ‘Any more heroes?’


A brace of haikus

    EARLY MORNING WALK HAIKU

            A flotilla of slugs

            Heads for the allotments

            Intent on mayhem.

 

            HAIKU FOR TODAY

              Eleven soup kitchens

              In Coventry alone;

              Tory Britain now.

 

Our star correspondent Ned Baslow is on holiday with his wife Bette, son Benjie, twin girls Beatrice and Barbara and Grandad Barnie in Benidorm.  Hurry back, Ned! We have an email from Elvis that needs a swift reply.

KINDLE EDITIONS (4) Justice of the Dagger
 The machines are yellow like the morning sun.

At first Muyu’s people thought them gods. They glowed, they glistened, they roared. No forest ears had ever heard such sounds. Not even the gunfire of the soldiers from the Distant Masters could match them…

How can young Muyu and his beautiful friend Lyana stop the hated soldiers and the timber companies from destroying the forests?

 Their friend ‘Greenboots’, whose book about their people’s plight has focused the eyes of the world on East Timor, now has a price on his head and they are on the run together, in a desperate bid to outwit Captain Selim, the Butcher in Shades…

 ‘Watson’s pedigree as a writer of political novels for young adults is impeccable…This is a powerful and intelligent book which uses its chosen genre both to grip and incite its teenage audience.’ Books for Keeps [5-star rating].

 This was a Waterstone’s Book of the Month.

 See more at http://tinyurl.com/ka7gbnd

  As ever, comments and contributions are welcome. Please email to Watsonworks@hotmail.co.uk

Thanks for reading this!

PS: System said No to photos this month!