L M Montgomery Part I

I still like some “children’s books” and I still read the ANNE series.  Although it has its faults, particularly in that it is overly sentimental, I enjoy re reading the stories. But I also find the author very interesting.  I’ve also read most of er adult novels and her other “girls” series, the Emily books but they never have the same charm for me as Anne.

Lucy Maud (usually called Maud) Montgomery was born in Prince Edward Island in Canada in 1874. Her mother died when she was a baby and she was looked after by her grandparents, while her father went away out west to recover from his grief.  He had run a general store but it didn't do well and he wanted to go out West to live. Her grandparents, who lived in Cavendish, were strict and “ultra-Victorian”  so she had an unhappy childhood.  Her grandfather, in particular, didn't seem to care for her at all. She was very lonely.  She was a dreamer and made up stories, which helped her.  During her childhood her father remarried and she visited him out West. However, she didn’t get along with the stepmother and said that her father’s second marriage was not a happy one.  She received a good education, including going to University, which enabled her to become a teacher.

She didn’t care much for teaching but it gave her time to write- and she began her career. She wrote short stories, and was able to secure a good income by so doing.  In time she also took on proof reading work for a newspaper.  In 1898, she moved back to Cavendish to look after her elderly and widowed grandmother.  She lived with the old lady until 1911, when her grandmother died.  It was a difficult time for her.  She was able to write and in 1908, she wrote her first book, Anne of Green Gables, which became a runaway success.  But she was lonely, still as her grandmother was not a companion for her.  She had various admirers but she didn’t find anyone who was a suitable husband, and she was tied by her duty to her grandmother. This situation comes up quite often in her books, where a daughter is expected to look after an elderly mother, or where a domineering Mother (or occasionally father) makes it difficult for an adult daughter and sometimes a son to marry…

In one of the Anne books, a lady called Janet finds that her admirer has not proposed to her, because his mother made him promise not to bring another woman into the house until she had died.

1897, she accepted a proposal from Edwin Simpson, out of a desire for companionship and protection, since marriage was considered a necessary rite of passage for women.  Even though she was earning her own living, she felt she needed the status of being a married woman.  She has some of her child characters remark in her books that “if you were married, your husband bossed you around, but you were single, people looked down on you as an old maid." and that the best thing to be would be a widow.

However, she wasn’t in love with Simpson –and she then met a young farmer, whom she did find physically attractive and was involved briefly with him.  She knew that he wasn’t likely to be a suitable husband as he shared none of her intellectual interests.  She broke off her engagement to Edwin Simpson and settled at home with her grandmother. She seems to have given up hope of finding a man whom she loved, who was marriageable.  During her years with her grandmother, she met and was courted by Ewen McDonald, who was a Presbyterian minister.

In 1911, she married him. Ewen was not a particularly clever man, but he was a minister and that had a certain status.  Maud was eager to have children and she wanted to be married, so while she didn’t love him, they married and moved to Ontario where he had taken a job.

Her Anne story, is about a middle aged couple (brother and sister) in Prince Edward Island, who want to adopt a boy to help them on their farm.  By mistake a girl is sent, the red headed Anne Shirley.  She is an imaginative child, who has never had a real home, and Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert come to love her. A lot of the humour in the story comes from Anne’s imagination clashing with the hard headed narrow minded (but often eccentric) folk of the farming community.  And some of Anne’s life is drawn from Maud’s.  The childhood loneliness, the resentment of “Victorian strictness” and the emotionalism. Maud's marriage was never easy. She soon realised that Ewen was suffering from serious depression and religious mania. Like some Presbyterians, he began to believe that he was not "saved" and that he was doomed to hell. During these fits of mania, he could barely function as a minister and Maud had to try and cover up for him. They had 2 sons, and one child who was stillborn. Maud wrote all the time to earn a living and she fulflled the duties of a minister's wife. M/F

Dickens Part II

Dickens had a troubled boyhood, due to his father’s financial problems. John Dickens was sent to the Marshalsea Debtors prison in 1824, because of his debts. As was the custom, his wife and family moved in with him. Charles was forced to leave school and get a job in a blacking factory, which he hated. He was humiliated by having to take a menial job and be put on the level of working class boys. He wasn’t in the factory long and he met a boy called Bob Fagin, who protected and helped him, but so terrible was the experience to him, that he ended up giving the name Fagin to the “villain” of Oliver Twist.  After a while, John Dickens inherited some money which allowed him to pay his debts, but the trauma to his son Charles was terrible. He never told his family of his time in the factory. After his time in the factory, he returned to school but his mother, he afterwards remembered angrily, had wanted him to go on earning. After leaving school, he found a clerical job in a law office but he became a shorthand reporter for Parliament. He was a hard working reliable fast and good at the job.  He reported on parliamentary debates. Then he began to write fiction and his first work to appear was “Sketches by Boz”…published in 1836. At that stage, he met the Hogarth family, was invited to their house and fall in love with Catherine, one of the daughters.  Her father George was a music critic for a newspaper. Charles got a job as editor of Bentley’s Miscellany. His next novel, appearing in serial form, was the Pickwick Papers. He married Catherine, and they moved to a house in Bloomsbury.  He was very fond of his wife’s younger sister Mary, who moved into their house to help Catherine with her housekeeping. Mary was young and unspoilt by marriage, and Dickens idealised her, though he still loved his wife.  And then she collapsed one evening and died in his arms.  He was so shattered by his grief that he had to stop working on Oliver Twist, the novel he was writing at the time.  He based the character Rose Maylie on Mary, and also many other “pure young girls” in his fiction, sexless and greatly idealised, owed something to his dead sister in law.

Charles Dickens Part I

Charles Dickens was born in Kent in 1812 where his father was working as a minor civil servant. John Dickens was a clerk in the Royal Navy pay office and was the model for “Mr Micawber” in David Copperfield. He was a good natured man but not very good at managing money and that meant that the young Dickens knew a great deal of insecurity. He was at the lower end of the Middle classes. Because of his father’s lack of common sense and responsibility, the family were much poorer than they should have been and he felt in danger of slipping from the middle class into the working class. His father got into debt and ended up in a debtors’ prison, where he moved with his family, until the debt was paid off. As a result of all this, Dickens highly prized the middle class values of honesty about money, prudence in financial matters, and an ethic of hard work and reliability. As a young man and even in his later years, when he was comfortably off, he worked incredibly hard and was always eager to earn as much as he could, by producing his work regularly and “giving value for money”. He disliked the upper classes who had a tradition of "not trying too hard" and prizing graceful behaviour and nonchalance over hard work. He had great sympathy for the poor, but was afraid, having been very poor himself, of falling into the working class and losing the status of being middle class.

Country Music

Country music developed mostly in the Southern states of the USA… born out of a mixture of Irish and Scottish and English folk music. The southern lands were settled by English, Scottish and Irish settlers, who brought their music with them.

They played fiddles, banjos, piano, tin whistles, mouth organs, even jugs and washboards.  The music was simple, with easy to learn lyrics and the melodies were also simple.  During the 1920s, the Carter family of Virginia, began to collect and record folk and country songs, and began to sing and perform publicly.   They broadcast from radio stations down near the Mexican border, and the music became better known and listened to all over the South and West.  Nashville became “Music City” where country singers and musicians moved to, in order to try their luck in the business.  In the 1950s a number of song writers came along, mostly young men who were particularly talented... and had striking voices, or who were very skilled at playing guitars, banjos etc.  Johnny Cash (1932-2003) was probably the best known, with numerous brilliant songs to his credit and a distinctive and wonderfully strong deep voice.  Other singers-song writers of the time were Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings, Hank Williams Junior and Merle Haggard... to name a very few.

During the 1960s, country singers, usually from conservative backgrounds, whose music spoke to the rural community, became more open to new ideas and their songs became more varied and raunchier…the demands of touring and the stress of performing often led to broken marriages, affairs and drinking and drug use.  Country singers were leading Rock and Roll lifestyles.  They began to have crossover hits which did well on the pop or rock charts…Most of the singers of the 1960s came from poor backgrounds and found that the sudden arrival of wealth in their lives and the particular strains of traveling and touring, led them to use drugs, or have affairs to cope with the loneliness and the stress.

I’ve always been a big country fan, and have visited Nashville. From childhood, I have listened to all the great singers, Johnny Cash in particular.  I read up about the history of country music and tried to go to concerts as much as I can. It is a lovely city and for someone who loves the music, a great place to be.  
So I wanted to write a story or 2 about people who work in the small bands, who are often trying to do the job they love and play the music that feels right for them, while trying to make a living. Its a hard life, living on tips and selling CDs and hoping that one of the established singers will like one of their songs and record it.  
There are the conflicts between keeping one’s musical integrity and trying to get taken on by a record label, or “make it big”. And the conflicts involved in marriages when the musicians are often away from home.  And that’s why I have taken to writing in the band “genre”..

Kris Kristoffersen 1936- (Part I)

Kris Kristofferson was born in Brownsville, Texas in 1936…

His father was an Army officer, so he travelled a lot as a child.  He graduated from High school in California, and he wanted to be a writer. He enrolled at Pomona College and graduated from there in 1958.  He was a talented athlete and played Rugby for his college.   He got a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford and went there, still intending to write…His family wanted him to go into the army and make it his career.   He enjoyed Oxford, and he kept up his sports activities.  He boxed, including a sparring match with the English boxer Henry Cooper.  However he was still determined to become a novelist.  He took up song writing and recorded a couple of songs, hoping that they would draw attention to to his writing.  But his brief musical career, under the name Kit Carson, was not successful.

In 1961, he married his girlfriend Flavia, and finally gave way to his family’s pressure to take up a career.  He also was willing to please them by choosing the military.  He attained the rank of Captain and was a helicopter pilot.  However the desire to write and play music was still strong in him and he was eventually to rebel against his middle class family.

In 1965, after a hitch in the Army, he decided to give it up and go to Nashville to pursue his dream of being a song writer.  His family all but disowned him, seeing him as rejecting their values.  His mother wanted him to take up a post as instructor in English Literature at West Point, but Kris preferred to become a janitor in Nashville, writing and trying to pitch his songs.   He was also able to work as a civilian helicopter pilot,  and went on writing.  He had a family to support and his son was in need of medical care, so he kept on working, but was still determined to write and try to sell his songs.  He and his wife divorced, later in the 60s.  Kris tried to sell one of his songs to Johnny Cash, Sunday Morning Coming Down.  Cash didn’t pay too much attention to it until Kris landed a helicopter on his property to get his attention. and as Kristoffersen put it, once Johnny had recorded the song he never had to work at  a regular job again....

Oscar Wilde

Wilde was very much the author of his own tragedy. After a few years of conventional married life, he had thrown himself into a dangerous sex life with young men, many of whom were poor and willing to make money by any means possible including blackmail. He had outraged Queensbury by his very obvious friendship with the young Lord Alfred, and had “shown off” in the Witness box at the libel trial. He could have fled abroad before he was arrested, the authorities were willing to give him a little leeway, but he chose not to do so. Mainly, he knew that he was guilty of the behavior that Queensbury was attacking him for, but he went along with Alfred’s desire to sue his father for libel, to please Douglas, who hated his father. Presumably Wilde believed that he would be able to sway the jury even though he must have been aware that his homosexual behavior was likely to be brought out in the trial. Since the law had recently been changed about homosexual acts, he may have hoped for a light sentence, because of his status as a gentleman and his own gift for witty repartee but he was still taking a chance. Having been found guilty of homosexual behaviour, he was sentenced to 2 years hard labour. After his time in prison, a few friends in England still supported him but he realised that he would be wiser to go abroad and he moved to France. He returned to Alfred Douglas, but the relationship did not last long. Douglas's selfishness finally wore out Oscar's love for him.

Joy Street

This is one of the first proper adult novels that I ever read. I don’t mean that it was “all about sex” but it was about a marriage, and was a serious examination of a woman’s life.  I read it as a teenager and was so naive at the time that some of it took me by surprise.  It was only when I was a little older that I understood some subtle hints...
Frances Parkinson Keyes was an American novelist who wrote many stories about historical subjects, some  set in the South and others in New England.
Her novel Joy Street is set in Boston just before and during WWII.  She was from the American upper class and her husband was involved in politics. She knew about upper class and political life. 
Joy Street is the story of a young woman of the Boston elite, Emily Thayer, who at 22 marries Roger Field, a young lawyer of good social position but poor.  Roger is a quiet shy man, who is devoted to his wife, and she has more charm and vivacity than him.  His new law firm is experimenting with taking on staff from different social and ethnic backgrounds, such as Jews and Irish and Italian Catholics.  Some of Emily’s family disapprove of this and dislike immigrants...
She is happy to help her new husband to welcome these new people into Boston society, but within a short time, she finds herself attracted to David Salomont, the womanising Jewish lawyer who has joined the firm. He tries to pursue her and she is tempted by him. 
However Emily is not a woman to give way to adultery lightly.  She tries to remove herself from too close contact with David, but her cousin, Priscilla, a new debutante on the social scene, makes it harder for her to do this.  Roger’s well-meant admiration for his fellow lawyer also interferes, at first.  Priscilla, a young shy woman, falls in love with David, and makes it clear that she wishes to marry him.   
Emily feels some jealousy, but she dedicates herself to her marriage.   She also tries to help the two other new lawyers, Brian Collins from an Irish family and Pellegrino De Lucca, from an Italian family.  Brian’s family though Catholic and hence “not accepted” socially are well to do and involved in politics.
With war looming, Roger tries to join the army but is rejected on health grounds.  Brian, David and Pellegrino all join up.  David turns down Priscilla’s proposal of marriage and leaves Boston for Washington, to join the Judge Advocate’s office, prior to active service.  Emily throws herself into war work and looking after Roger who is also working hard, in his law firm and doing something for the war effort.
The story ends just after the war finishes, and it is a bit of a surprise ending.  It intrigued me as a kid because it wasn’t quite a happy ending but not a sad one. I won’t mention the ending, because I hope my readers will go out there and read the book! What was also wonderful about it, as a writer, was how well Keyes could write about adulterous love without allowing her heroine to end up in bed with the wrong man, nor to describe sex explicitly. In writing nowadays, the writer has greater freedom to talk about many subjects and to use explicit and crude language... But it is quite possible to write about love of all sorts, without this.   I like some novels and stories where the sex is raw, but I keep coming back to Joy Street….

the Empty Voice of Day Benedict Brooke

I seem to have run out of cigarettes and beer, and time

I’m shaking every morning, got cold sweats and facial lines

I never thought - tho’ I couldn’t grow younger

That age would bide its time

And now my body aches and my liver

Seems no longer a friend of mine

 I seem to have run out of anecdotes

And the jokes are a little stale

I think I had a memory, though I’m not sure.

The days conspire against me

And on Tuesdays and Wednesdays I try

To put a bookmark in the week

And only weekends seem to be where they belong

I seem to be somewhat older -The mirror says, I hope its lying

Or else it’s a joke -my nose has veins where it once had skin

And my wat’ry eyes are desiccated

I seem to have lost all appreciation of the world

a Tireless regime of crosswords and pointless papers

Laughing with the fools who secretly laugh at me

As they see my flesh destroyed and my famous mind

Fulfilling nothing but their trivial questions.

 I wish I could be resigned and call time upon it all.....

Jerry Reed singer and guitarist, RIP Snowman

Jerry Reed Hubbard was born in 1937 in Atlanta, and was known professionally as Jerry Reed. His parents separated when he was a baby and he spent some of his childhood in foster homes. He worked in cotton mills but soon became more interested in music. He served in the US army for 2 years, he went to Nashville and in the early 1960's he started song writing. One of his most famous songs was Guitar Man which he wrote for Elvis Presley. Another one was “A thing called Love” which was recorded in 1971 by Johnny Cash. In the early 1970s Reed used to appear on the Glen Campbell show, where he played with Campbell, also a brilliant guitarist. One of his biggest hits was the novelty song, “When you’re hot, you’re hot”. He also recorded one of his own Songs “Amos Moses” a mixture of rock, country, funk, and Cajun styles. He did some acting, mostly in comedies. He was cast as “the Snowman” in the Burt Reynolds movies, Smokey and the Bandit and sequels. His singing and playing career began to take second place to his acting, but he had a hit with “East Bound and Trucking” from the "Smokey" movies. I never saw Jerry Reed playing live, and I don’t even like Smokey films! But he had enormous talent as a guitarist and song writer, and great charm as a performer, with his Southern accent and lovable smile...I wish I’d met him. He died in Nashville in 2008, and his wife, Priscila Mitchell passed away a few years later.

Cold Water, a search for meaning Benedict Brooke

I still find traces of unknown places

And things that were lost by Time

I sometimes think that inside a drink

I’ll find old friends of mine

I’ve opened doors, got scars from wars

Yet nothing seems to change

Bet on dark horses and occult forces

But life just ain’t that strange

I’ve hung my head; I’ve begged to be dead

And I never meant a word

Thought I was strong and sang a song

Too nascent to be heard

I’ve played for time and spun a line

And never fooled a one

Imagined schemes and crack eyed dreams

Shot down before begun

I’ve seen the world gross and unfurled

Yet never stirred a hair

Both God and gold left me quite cold

Ain’t nothing so insincere

And I’ve locked horns with unicorns

And many kinds of fabled beast

And danced with stars and haunted bars

That misled me not in the least

I’ve fooled with runes and picked up tunes

Embossed within my skull

And I looked askance at each last chance

My heart at least was full

Of platitudes and attitudes

I had more content than I was worth….

Yet I wonder “what the bloody hell,

Am I doing on this Earth”.

Dennis Locorriere

Dennis was the lead singer of Doctor Hook and the Medicine Show, in the 1960s and 1970s. He was born in New Jersey in 1949. He was always interested in drawing and in music and in the 1960’s he began to play professionally. He met with Ray Sawyer, who together with other Southern-born musicians had been in a band called the Chocolate Papers. They had played gigs in the South and round the Mid-west but relocated to New York. They formed a new band, and unable to think of a name, when told by a bar manager than they had to have one, they came up with “Doctor Hook and the Medicine Show”. Dr Hook was a reference to Ray Sawyer who had an eyepatch due to losing his eye in a motor accident…(like Captain Hook). The Medicine show was a reference to their taking drugs. Like most musicians at the time, they worked very hard, toured a lot of the time and coped with the stress of long hours of travel as best they could.

Blondes, Short comic poem Benedict Brooke

Blondes have more fun

Brunettes have the brains

At least that’s what they say

In fact, that ain’t true

Blondes just think that they do!

And what do they know, anyway?