At Work Upstairs

Listening to the “Little Drummer Boy” floating in the window in July.

Not sure where I picked up the reference to Anne Fine but her novel Raking the Ashes was worth a read. Tilly, its narrator, is a cross between a put-upon stepmother and a wicked stepmother–tho her “wickedness” is not fully directed at her stepchildren. Her partner Geoff is the epitome of Hazlitt’s epigraph “Nine times out of ten, good nature is simple idleness of disposition.” Tilly’s dark pragmatism trumps Geoff’s fecklessness good nature. Tilly herself is a piece of work as becomes more and more clear as the narrative unfolds and the reader becomes aware of the limitations as well as the accuracies in the way she sees her world.

I’m going to add her other books to my to read list–in part because FIne claims to have been indelibly impressed by Christina Stead‘s The Man Who Loved Children–a book I found very troubling twenty years since it cut too close. It still sits on my shelf despite the fact that many of the books from that time are gone. A good interview with Fine here.

A search query so broad that it returns 200+ pages of references is not helpful.

I’m not trying to keep up with the day job:

1. Add 1/3 of the new references to EndNote cause I love copy and paste when importing just won’t work.

2. Write crappy draft of a research plan so that I don’t spend hours wandering (more or less happily) among the periodical stacks.

3. Make appointment with eye doctor. Her prediction that I would need a new prescription for two years was wildly optimistic and my neck’s getting a crick in it.

4. Renew and return library books cause there has to be something dead simple on the list.

5. Read 1/4 of Acadia, Maine, and New Scotland: Marginal Colonies in the Seventeenth Century.

6. Write a couple long over due letters.

And just think, there are more to do once I find someplace to buy turnbuttons (the metal washer-like fastener used to attach old wood storms–yes that is the name of the thingamajig on the upper right next to the brick).

I’ve finished George Elliot Clarke’s novel George and Rue and it’s made me want to go back and read Buckler’s novel which I haven’t read in years. One of the things I most like about Clarke’s writing is that is utterly unsentimental and lyrical.

Sentimentality is the bane of many Atlantic Canadian novels–Alaister McLeod being a typical example. I suspect that the sentimentality–is a generational difference. Younger writers such as Coady, Conlin, and Hynes spend far more time working through what it means to come from or to live in a sodden, alcoholic culture.

Another reason why I’m tired of the summer heat: I’m tired of listening to myself complain about not having any ideas about what to make for supper. There are only so many times I can eat bean salad or pasta salad before I lose my mind. And since we don’t own a barbecue and don’t each much meat defaulting to grilled meat isn’t working for me. And apparently potato chips for supper is a bad idea.

My toes wiggled when I heard that Bill S-18 has passed through both houses. This means that 1911 census data will be available online sometime in August. I’ll be able to verify where a couple people in my family were living at that time.

One of my slow-moving projects is related to family research and in one of my odd sources I’ve found a reference to a relative who “was a cavalryman in the Duke of Wellington’s army” and a “veteran of the battles of the Nile and Trafalgar”. The source itself is a bit dubious with its whiff of self-promotion.

I’ve put no energy into verifying this information–there are much larger holes to deal with–but I happened on this site today. It allows you to search a database drawn from British Navy and Army records of men (and one woman) who
served at Trafalgar.

A quiet Canada Day here. Hot and still–spent reading, and talking, and sitting on the porch swing. Most of the neighbours had fled to cottages or were crouched inside next to their air conditioning. The kids up the road started partying at about two and by eight were enjoying that quintessential Canada Day freedom–wandering up and down the street, gossiping and laughing, beer bottles in hand.