Jubilee-ing and Black Hearts in Battersea

It's all gone bunting crazy round here. Estate Agents especially can't get enough of those fashionable little flags it seems. A double bank holiday weekend approaches with a schedule of street parties round every corner, picnics in every park and a flotilla of a 1000 boats to sail down the Thames: God Save Our Queen for 60 Glorious Years! (and let's not mention the 10 degree temperature drop and three days of driving rain that's forecast.) I'm unwrapping a Union Jack wrapped teacake in her honour as I type.

The Queen's Coronation Day (I burst with pride to announce) also coincides with my birthday. I have always taken for granted that flags should be raised and the Anthem played to provide a suitable backdrop to the Unwrapping of Breakfast Gifts. My 6th birthday marked the Queen's Silver Jubilee, we played 'Pin the Crown on the Queen' at my party and everyone got a small flag as a going home present. I received a lot of jubilee china mugs as gifts; none still in existence alas. The husband has been more careful with his silver jubilee biscuit tin which still holds such marvels as decorated milk bottle tops, special edition 50p piece, first day cover and a jubilee copy of  Krazy comic. Treasure.
The boys' school is of a fairly Republican bent, so their celebrations have been muted in comparison to some. They are however all going on a whole school picnic today which found me trying to make red, white and blue popcorn in a panic at 8.40 this morning; enough of a failure as to potentially worry whoever finds one of the 5 stray blue pieces. Otherwise I'm afraid the closest thing I have to a keepsake for them is the wrapper from my teacake.

So what book to recommend in Her Majesty's honour? A book published in the year of the Accession? ('Charlotte's Web') A book that features the Queen? ('The BFG', 'The Queen's Knickers', 'Horrid Henry meets the Queen') A generally royal book? ('The Prince and the Pauper', 'Princess Smartypants'. 'I want my Potty'...)

Slightly wickedly in view of the conjunction of flotilla and weather forecast I'm drawn to 'Black Hearts in Battersea' the second book in Joan Aiken's epic 'The Wolves of Willoughby Chase' sequence; the first of which I reviewed here. Taking up the story of Simon, the girls' rescuer in that first book and moving the action to London, it also introduces one of children's literature's best ever heroines in the form of Dido Twite. The assuredly melodramatic plot involves the substitution of babies, long lost twins, kidnap, gun running, escape by hot air balloon and a conspiracy to assassinate both aristocracy and King. It's exciting and funny in equal measure and had Bill as gripped as its predecessor when I read it to him earlier this year.

At the (black- obviously) heart of the book are a series of increasingly inventive attempts to kill the incumbent Duke and Duchess of Battersea who are only rescued from a series of misadventures by the fortuitous employment of an enormous piece of tapestry the Duchess likes to carry with her to work on when bored. One of these attempts involves their ducal barge being scuttled as it progresses back down the Thames from a Royal visit to Hampton Court. Wrapping the tapestry around the hole manages to buy enough time for the boat to find rescuers and the sinking Duke and Duchess to be saved from drowning.

'"By Jove!" said the Duke, as he stood steaming and emptying water out of his diamond-buckled shoes. "What a scrape, eh? I fancied my number was up that time - so it would have been too, if it weren't for your plucky lads, Furneaux! Much obliged to 'ee all!"
"Indeed, yes!" The Duchess smiled round warmly upon the dripping assembled students. She looked much less bedraggled than anybody, as the upper part of her body had never been submerged, thanks to the speed with which she had been towed to land. "You are a set of brave, good souls. You must all come to dinner at the Castle as soon as possible."'

The lessons for the Queen here are obvious. 1. Pack Tapestry or expendable Corgi on Sunday in case of anti- monarchist conspirators. 2. Wear Proper Queen outfit with big puffy skirt to aid flotation. 3. Ensure competent swimmer outriders accompany you for immediate rescue- I suggest David Walliams, Ben Fogle, Rebecca Addlington and Duncan Goodhew as a minimum to swim beside boat on Sunday. 4. Consider staying at home with a good book which if Alan Bennett is to be believed you'd surely prefer anyway.

Happy Jubilee Weekend.

'Black Hearts in Battersea' by joan Aiken, pub. Random House, isbn, 978-0-09945639-1

Arabel's Raven

Today is apparently World Read Aloud Day, not to mention also National Crown Roast of Pork Day (although that may just be in the US I think...I'm not sure I know what a Crown Roast is). There's always something to celebrate of course, whatever the day of the year, but Reading Aloud is an especially good one and worthy of note in this blog. If you'd rather just find out about the Crown Roast try here. That's a fine piece of pork.

Every day is Read Aloud day in this house of course given the ages of our children. But I hope that every day will remain a Read Aloud day for many years to come. My lovely Pa read aloud regularly to me until about the age of 10 I think, and after then there were occasional cosy nights on holiday when he'd scare the pants off all of us with an MR James ghost story ('Whistle and I'll come to You' *shiver*) around the fire. The husband courted me with his willingness to read classic pony stories to me of an evening. Now, I thoroughly enjoy getting stuck into increasingly complex stories with Bill. Having just completed 'Black Hearts in Battersea' we may have reached Hobbit time if I can't find a copy of 'Night birds in Nantucket' (although I remember that as being less good). I'll be sad if and when he dismisses my services.

So I offer you a fantastic book to read aloud today- partly because it was written especially for that- in the form of  another Joan Aiken; 'Arabel's Raven'.
Completely different from the spooky melodrama of the Willoughby Wolves reviewed here, 'Arabel's Raven' and the other 'Mortimer' books were originally written to be read aloud for the BBC children's programme of the 1970's 'Jackanory'.
'Jackanory' was a staple of my childhood telly. A different book was read aloud in five fifteen minute installments over the course of a week by an actor with no frills or furbelowes beyond the occasional cut to an illustration. If you missed a day- tough- there was no iplayer or recorder then of course. I'm in danger of sounding like a right old fogey, and I should say that I think there are many things about 'modern' telly for kids which are wildly superior to what we were offered then, but at its best 'Jackanory' was mesmerising, despite or perhaps because of its simplicity.
Bernard Cribbins was a Jackanory regular and the 'Mortimer' stories were written especially for him to read. I remember snorting, roaring, weeping, wetting myself with laughter watching him- and news that there was about to be a new one was the closest we got then to 'event' telly.
It's very sad then, that amongst the vast quantities of nostalgia clips available on YouTube there doesn't seem to be any Cribbins doing Jackanory. Still I'll offer you the original titles to preface my review and a snippet of equally wonderful Kenneth Williams to demonstrate just how minimalist telly got to be then.

'Arabel's Raven' is the first story in a series about small girl Arabel and her pet raven Mortimer and all the chaos that owning a raven with a beak for trouble can cause.
The books are built on about 80% dialogue which makes them perfect for reading aloud. You'll need a good line in funny voices, but the quality of the writing and differentiation of the voices makes it a joyful experience.

"One morning Mr. Round and Mr. Toby Round and Mrs. Jones were all very busy arranging a display of new issues in the shop window. When they had finished they discovered that Mortimer had eaten the spiral staircase.
'Mrs. Jones, you and your bird will have to go. We have kind, long suffering natures, but Mortimer has done eight hundred and seventeen pounds, sixty-seven pence' worth of damage. You may have a year to repay it. Please don't trouble to ever come in again.'
'Glad I am that I haven't such a kind, long-suffering nature,' snapped Mrs. Jones, and she dumped Mortimer on top of her wheeled shopping-bag and dragged him home.
'Stairs!' she said to Arabel, 'What's the use of a bird who eats stairs? Gracious knows there's enough rubbish in the world- why can't he eat tonic bottles, or ice-cream cartons, or used cars, or oil slicks, tell me that? But no! he has to eat the only thing that joins the upstairs to the downstairs.'
'Nevermore!' said Mortimer.
'Tell that to the space cavalry!' said Mrs. Jones"

Mortimer redeems himself by the capture of a band of jewel thieves in this story, although the sword Excalibur comes off less well as I remember in a subsequent volume when he becomes the first raven to drive a lawnmower. As first read-aloud farce they can't be bettered. Despite being somewhat hampered by not being Bernard Cribbins when I read these to Bill he was also pretty giggly at their escalations. And they're illustrated by Quentin Blake. What more do you need? Happy Reading Aloud today and every day.

'Arabel's Raven' by Joan Aiken, illus. Quentin Blake, pub. Barn Owl books, isbn 978-1-903015-14-8

Willoughby wolves

An unashamed return to a very old classic today. Joan Aiken is another author of my childhood who is proving entirely pleasurable to revisit and 'The Wolves of Willoughby Chase' may be her finest book. As I write that I immediately think of about 10 more of her books that I love and start my own internal argument. Hmm, yes, let's not rank them but merely observe that she was both a terrific writer for children and terrifically versatile; able to 'do'  nail-chewing drama, snot-inducing funny, domestic magic and Eastern European folklore with equal ease. Don't miss her short story collections- especially if you come across any of the out of print ones. If you find a copy of 'All but a Few' send it to me...

I read 'The Wolves of Willoughby Chase' to Bill over Christmas. It's the first in a sequence of books she wrote set in a mythical period of English history: 'Shortly after the accession to the throne of Good King James 3rd in 1832. At this time, the Channel tunnel from Dover to Calais having been recently completed, a great many wolves, driven by severe winters, had migrated through the tunnel from Europe and Russia to the British Isles'. To some extent it stands apart from the rest of the sequence though as the story is the most complete in itself.
I love the idea of wolfish peril from the Chunnel; rather more romantic than a Sangatte full of desperate asylum seekers, but presumably equally infuriating to a mythical 1832 Daily Mail.

The story concerns privileged rich girl Bonnie who lives in the splendour of remote Willoughby Chase surrounded by loving servants and much indulged by her kindly parents. Her mother however is sick and must be taken on a round the world recuperative voyage by her father, and so impoverished orphan cousin Sylvia is brought to the house to be a playmate, and distant relative Miss Slighcarp engaged as Guardian and governess to take charge of both. There is a fantastic set piece early in the book detailing Sylvia's epic 24 hour train journey to reach Willoughby, sharing her compartment with the shadowy Mr Grimshaw. The train is held up and they are set upon by wolves.

'Sylvia screamed. Another instant, and a wolf precipitated itself through the aperture thus formed. It turned snarling on the sleeping stranger, who started awake with an oath, and very adroitly flung his cloak over the animal. He then seized one of the the shattered pieces of glass lying on the floor and stabbed the imprisoned beast through the cloak. It fell dead.
"Tush" said Sylvia's companion, breathing heavily and passing his hand over his face, "Unexpected- most."'

 You can see from this extract that the language Aiken uses is rooted in the time period and is not always easy. Once I started reading it aloud I worried that it might be a too complicated choice and Bill seemed to be losing interest early- but a wolf leaping through a window and being stabbed through the heart is a pretty good wake up and from that point the story really accelerates in pace and he was hooked.

Miss Slighcarp and Mr Grimshaw turn out to be Proper Bad 'Uns. Once Bonnie and Sylvia are left in their care they proceed to sack all the servants and sell off all the household goods whilst keeping the girls prisoner. Worse still, news comes that the ship with Bonnie's parents in has sunk with no survivors and the girls are now completely in Miss Slighcarp's power. An ill planned escape goes wrong and the girls are taken to be drudges in Mrs. Brisket's School for Orphans. The miseries they endure there are recognisable to an adult reader familiar with Dickens or |Jane Eyre but for Bill were eye popping stuff. At the end of a particularly wretched chapter he was pleading with me to read on: 'I just need to know they'll be all right mum. I need to know.' Ah. Proper suffering. That's what I look to induce in my children through the written word. Great.

Relief does come in the final third of the book with their rescue by Bonnie's goose-farming, wolf savvy friend Simon who becomes the hero of the rest of the books in the sequence. The girls travel by foot to London, secure support and return to Willoughby with reinforcements for the final denouement and confrontation. As Miss Slighcarp is denounced, Bonnie's parents return miraculously recovered (I thought I could reveal that because you might have guessed.) and all is restored.

''"But Aunt Sophy," said Sylvia,"your tale must be so much more adventurous than ours! Were you not shipwrecked?"
"Yes, indeed we were!" said Lady Green laughing,"and your uncle and I spent six very tedious days drifting in a rowing-boat, our only fare being a monotonous choice of grapes and oranges , of which there happened to be a large crate in the dinghy, fortunately for us. We were then picked up by a small and most unsanitary fishing-boat, manned by a set of fellows as picturesque as they were unwashed, who none of them spoke a word of English...On this boat we received nothing to eat but sardines in olive oil. I am surprised these shocks and privitations did not carry me off, but Sir Willoughby maintains they were the saving of me"'

I am very happy for Bill to read as much 'Cows in Action' and 'Beast Quest' to himself as he likes but I like to save the really good stuff to read to him myself and this is really good stuff.

'The Wolves of Willoughby Chase' Joan Aiken, pub. Random House isbn 978-0-099-45663-6