Wild Wycombe Today

lazy Saturday morning

 

delicious Friday morning thoughts

 

today's recording

The Naked Island

 

I;

THE NAKED ISLAND is a war narrative of appalling suffering, but also of indomitable courage and endurance on the part of British and Australian soldiers. Russell Braddon arrived in Malaya in 1941. After sketchy training the troops were plunged into battle against an enemy well trained and overwhelming in numbers. Defeat was inevitable. On his twenty-first birthday he was captured and seated in a ditch to be shot—but the Japanese changed their minds. Then followed over three years of captivity—in Kuala Lumpur, in Changi gaol at Singapore, in Thailand (Siam) building the notorious 'railway of death'. The Japanese knew every trick of humiliating and breaking their prisoners. Yet the captives showed that the human spirit can surmount the extremes of physical agony and stay unconquered; and a few men of exceptional bravery emerged, like Padre Noel Duckworth and the medical officer Major Kevin Fagan. Russell Braddon tells the tale with simplicity and with a cynical wit. He does not disguise his view that thousands suffered for the mistakes of the pre-War planners. Readers are warned, too, that he does not gloss over the grim, details of the prisoners' ordeal. This PAN edition has a new Foreword and is specially illustrated with photographs that did not appear in the original edition.

    Russell Braddon, son of a brilliant lawyer and great-grandson of Sir Edward Braddon, Premier of Tasmania, took his degree at Sydney University and joined the Australian Army just in time to sail with the ill-fated 8th Australian Division to Malaya. After the War he re-entered the university to study law. Ordered to rest for a year, he came to England and met his ex-P.O.W. friend Sydney Piddington, who, with his wife, was becoming famous for the 'thought-reading' act which he and Braddon had first perfected in Changi prison-camp. Braddon became the Piddingtons' manager, toured with them, and wrote a book about them. Then he began work on The Naked Island and after its successful publication started lecturing. He is a champion of the idea of the British Commonwealth and is a vigorous crusader for human rights. He has written one novel, Those in Peril, and a popular life-story of the famous airman Group Captain Cheshire, V.C.

I'll write more about this book soon, and explain why it's one of my favurite books since childhood.

Vagaries of the real world

Well, it seems that the vagaries of the vagabond creates uncertainty and distrust - especially among those who are determined to assume "ownership", and "certainty" of the ground that we travel upon, and the space we travel through.

When I first began this journal of - perhaps - another journey, in February 2007, the house that I had been tenanting, paying rent - for over six years, had been sold, and the new owners - a young couple in their early thirties, full of the arrogance and enthusiasm of youth and fresh marriage; decided that that delightful cottage, un-assuming, but redolent with 50 years of subtle and caring echoes from owners and tenants past, should be demolished, bulldozed into dust.


The tiny rectangular patch of land held under Torrens Title, which market forces said was far more valuable than ambiance, the memories of yesteryear; and so, a "new" house - pregnant with the design and dreams of a future life - should be built.

And so it was - or - was in the process of being built, almost completed, as of November, last year.

I moved abode, hastily, without serious pre-planning. Just chucked everything that seemed necessary to my present and past life into cardboard boxes and moved. Found another. A roof, brick walls, somewhere to cook, to sleep, to wash and ablute.
But that is not what prompted this post.

There have been several other changes since this blog began. Apparently Google has swallowed Blogger, and is one of the reasons why there have been few posts since its inception.

I, with somewhat sheepish face ( though don't know why), have to admit that had forgotten how to "sign in". The paper record of the "Blogger username" and password had been hurriedly stuffed into the bottom of one of the tea-chests or cardboard boxes, whereabouts unknown - until recently.

Had also lost contact with my co-contributor. Apparently another vagabond. Had also shifted footprints, moved house. I can, and will - now thank him for giving me the vital clue which enabled me to negotiate my way through the myriad of mental hoops, gates, locks and fences which had been erected by the new "owners" of this particular piece of cyberspace.

While the cosmos knows not time, another year in the Roman calendar begins.

So - For the rare traveller who inadvertently stumbles upon these backwater pieces of writing - can only wish them joy.

For this day, and the coming days. For as long as one can read - or cyberspace exists.

Prophecies

I went to last summer’s sunflower field. It’s been flattened and lightly manured, a pervasive smell of old cow-dung in the air. Three sunflowers were still standing, much as in my last visit: skeletal, downcast. See A Wayfarer’s Notes. I needed my hat and gloves for the field is exposed and the wind bore the sharp sting of sleet. The neighbouring woods were unquiet, their boughs sighing and agitated in the wind, echoing with pheasants’ hoarse cries and the distant barking of dogs. The sun had set but the horizon was still a bright space between lowering clouds and the twinkling lights on distant hills.

I was drawn to this desolate pilgrimage in order to understand the value of home, the roof and walls which protected me. The flickering TV screen was an abomination in mine eyes. Heedless of the weather my heart yearned for the open sky.

I feel a tide turning in the world, or at least in myself, a tiny part of this world.

On September 12th 2001 I said “Now America will come to its senses. It will understand vulnerability and interdependence, and will ask why it is so hated; and repent.” I admit to being wrong in saying “now”. The time was not ready. Things had to get worse before the dawning of whatever is to come.

Reality itself is being questioned across the world and the Internet is the voice of questions. I see a great blindness, I mean people’s eyes are closed and they see only a supposed reality, and not an experienced reality. Swimming in the soup of communal ideas, we cannot distinguish truth from lies, fact from illusion.

I was wrong in saying “America” too. It’s an abstraction. I’ve not been to that land for fifteen years, but I foolishly imagine it through movies and news and talking to fellow-bloggers.

At my daughter’s house in Gloucester last night we lit a coal fire and it took me back to childhood in the Fifties, where this was our only heating. It was hard to light: fanning the flames billowed sulphurous smoke into the room. The fire was a nostalgic and impractical gesture: we still kept a central heating radiator on. I renounce nostalgia! Now is the only time to be.

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour

In the “supposed reality”, these are the words of a “genius” William Blake giving school-teachers an excuse to idolize dead poets and consider ourselves lesser mortals separated from the classic authors by a great gulf; thus missing Blake’s point entirely. His words are an impassioned invitation to see for ourselves. He quotes the Book of Numbers, XI, 29:

Would to God that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit upon them!

Amen to that. As I walked back, the incense of woodsmoke wafted from behind some hedge, in the gathering gloom.

Pic (click to enlarge): West Wycombe from last year’s sunflower field this evening, showing the Dashwood Mausoleum and the Church of St Laurence topped by the Golden Ball. Just above the horizon, you see the outline of a red kite, a species of hawk now prolific in these parts after near-extinction.

What's in a name?

Am, at present, "moving house" in real life. Packing into cardboard boxes the collected detritus of memories, the flotsam washed in on the waves from a lifetime of experience.

Do I need it all .. that is the question. What book, what piece of paper, what letter from a lover long ago, what picture in a frame. Furniture and fripperies, small statues holding within them the memories of special people and events.

For how much are we held in bondage to the past?