Upstart Crow.

Maggie O'Farrell.

 My son recently sent me a copy of Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell, the winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020. It is an extraordinary novel, its prose is often lyrical and beautifully sustained in describing emotions and events, funeral rituals and detailing the journey of the plague. Sometimes its story is unbearable. The heroine is Anne Hathaway, rechristened as directed by her father in his will, as Agnes. She is a woman in her mid twenties from a family of affluent yeoman farmers, old, then, to be unmarried; she married the 18 year old son of a brutish Stratford glove-maker, a bully and an unpopular man. The son, never named, has had a good education and has become a Latin tutor to the children of the wealthier citizens of Stratford, those with pretensions. When they wed, she is pregnant and six months later, gives birth to Susanna; two years along the road, identical twins Hamnet and Judith [named after friends and neighbours of the couple] appear…

William Shakespeare 
April 23rd 1564-
April 23rd 1616.
He was 52, quite old in an age when
the average age of death was 35.

Agnes dominates the narrative; her husband is never named and she appears not to notice, or to dismiss, his gradual success as a playwright and the leader of a theatre company, appearing at Court from time to time. Chiefly, he lives in London. The gradual wealth he earns and sends home, is never discussed even when it permits the removal of the family into a huge and beautiful new home in Stratford. Everyone seems mystified as to how the Shakespeares have managed to become wealthy. The prescient details of how the plague spreads from a cabin boy and a monkey in Alexandria by degrees and chance encounters, to Stratford is brilliantly observed and should offer pause for thought to anti-vaxxers now. Twin Judith is infected but despite all, it is her twin Hamnet who catches the plague from her and dies at 11. The grief of both mother and twin is overwhelming but it is the grievous loss to the oft-absent father which is even more moving. He writes Hamlet three years after his much-loved son’s death in a sort of atonement and perhaps to demonstrate to his wife and himself the overwhelming grief he feels over their loss. Hamnet and Hamlet were “entirely interchangeable” names as seen in parish records in Stratford during the late

Globe Theatre, built by Shakespeare's company of players,
1599,destroyed by fire.
   June 29th 1613.

16^th and early 17^th centuries.

Having just been moved with sadness and admiration for Maggie O’Farrell’s lyrical re-imagining of the death of Hamnet and the Shakespeare story. I happened to see the phrase, “upstart crow” somewhere and I remembered the Shakespearean connection. In fact the description is the title of Ben Elton’s adaptation of the critically-acclaimed BBC TV sitcom starring David Mitchell which moved to the Gielgud Theatre in February 2020. It is a satirical Black-Adderesque comedy which has been much-lauded. I hadn’t known that the description came from one of Shakespeare’s rivals, Robert Greene, who published, “at his dyeing request”, a tract called Greene’s Groats-Worth of Witte bought with a million of Repentance. It describes” the follie of youth, the falsehood of make-shifte flatterers, the miserie of the negligent, and mischiefes of deceiuing Courtezans” and makes public criticism of his many enemies. Its singular title quotes, “an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers” and this is meant for Shakespeare. It is the first mention of Shakespeare in print [September 20, 1592.], and is both an accusation of his plagiarism and the intellectual disparagement of Shakespeare as someone who had not attended university. [Greene had attended both Oxford and Cambridge!] Greene also refers to Shakespeare as “an absolute Johannes fac totum” [or Jack-of-all-trades] a reference to the fact that Shakespeare was an actor-manager as well as a playwright.

Kenneth Branagh as Will
in All Is True.

/Ben Elton

A timely footnote is that I happened across Kenneth Branagh’s All Is True [2018] on Netflix the other evening; it is a story suffused with melancholy as it tells the elegiac tale of Shakespeare’s retirement in 1610 after the complete destruction by fire of the Globe Theatre. He sets about trying to establish himself as part of the Stratford household he knows so little, and re-designing his large garden as he ponders his life, often regretting past events. The narrative is imagined differently from Hamnet in some ways, in particular Hamnet’s death, and the portrayal of Anne/Agnes, but the stoical sadness of Anne, his wife, and the clear unhappiness of his daughter Susanna in her marriage, and of Judith, Hamnet’s twin, who lives with her parents, suffuses his life. Interestingly, the script-writer for both Upstart Crow and All Is True is Ben Elton who seems to be developing a Shakespearian monopoly. His script-writing is impeccable.

Globe interior.

Robert Greene's Groats-worth of Witte

Southwark where Shakespeare spent much
of his life and wrote most of his body of work

Cover of Maggie O'Farrell's
extraordinary book.

Georgia on my Mind.

 

Potus

I try hard to be less obsessive about American politics; a little easier in this relatively Trump-free period. My horror at his person and his personality and his politics has reduced in intensity as his exposure has been reduced and his power, diminished. The profound gratitude for his relative absence from the stage is coupled with relief at the policies of the rather more grown-up Biden administration. However, my interest in American politics continues despite good intentions, as I witness what seems to be the withering of democracy in that benighted country, always pronouncing itself as the greatest while showing, day to day, its entrenched racism and appetite for corruption in the search for political power. One State’s example will suffice before I move on with the vow to donate no more time and space on this blog to American politics!

Anti-democratic reverberations
from Trump's Big Lie.

Georgia ran one of Trump’s “rigged” 2020 elections with alleged widespread voter fraud for which no evidence emerged. Following Trump’s example that no evidence means you can just make up alternative fiction providing it is destructive, this week the Georgia Legislature passed a flurry of measures aimed at protecting the integrity of their elections by restricting voting access, primarily aimed at black voters. The proposals directly target the methods used in the run-up to the 2020 election to increase the black vote. Limiting early Sunday morning voting, for instance, is a direct attack on “Souls to the Polls”, a ‘get-out-to-vote’ exercise led by Black churches. A CNN analysis found that black voters made up 34.6% of the voters who cast early ballots on the three weekends preceding the election; these would be
eliminated under the new proposals. The same bill prohibits free food and drinks from being served to those standing in the apparently endless queues waiting to vote;

volunteers frequently served pizza and chips to voters waiting to vote at predominantly Black precincts in the Atlanta area. Who knew that the battle to reduce the black franchise would importantly involve the humble pizza?

The legislative package which passed in the State Senate, [it must be said, by “a narrow majority”], would also repeal the so-called ‘no excuse absentee voting’, a method used by 1.3 million Georgia voters in last November’s election. I think absentee voting means postal voting for which no excuse is normally needed in democracies; it is simply an alternative way to vote which has in-built safeguards. Repealing this absentee voting measure is deemed advantageous to 65+ white voters while being disadvantageous to millions of black voters. It takes a certain dedication, and perhaps panic, to custom-build this degree of cynical manipulation into the electoral process. AND astonishingly, to do it in the full glare of publicity in the comfortable knowledge that white voters in Georgia approve. Mass white protests are not expected!!

Demonstrators chained together outside the
State Capitol building. March 2021.

While these [and other] Georgian, presumably Republican, measures suggest that truly democratic voting available to all, means that Republicans believe that they cannot easily win fair elections in the future. Martin Luther King, son of the famous father, suggests that more than 250 legislative measures, currently being hastily assembled across 43 states, are a more “sophisticated” version of the Jim Crow practices which prevented black voting in the past. If passed, almost nationwide, these anti-democratic ‘rules’ would certainly reduce the black vote by providing sufficient obstacles to ensure voter apathy. So now we see how the “greatest democracy in the world” operates! Voting suppression aimed at blacks through lawful means. Let us hope that Biden & Co manage to enact counter measures nationally which protect, and encourage, the black vote. Surely at some point, all those red-faced, angry people in MAGA hats which really read, Make America White Again, will begin to understand that America’s future is indeed, multi-coloured. And perhaps ALL Americans will realise that their democracy is currently being degraded possibly beyond repair.

Lt Gov. Geoff Duncan [centre]

Stacey Abrams.

I now read of Hope appearing in Georgia! A leader of the Georgia business community, Andrea Young, said that her group would block all voting restrictions with appeals to the State’s corporate interests. “As a business community, you can’t talk about racial justice and then stand by and let voting rights be pushed back,” she told a CNN interviewer this week. Georgia’s Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, [no lily-livered liberal one would assume from his website] who normally presides over the Senate, left the chamber Monday during the debate to signal his opposition to ending no-excuse absentee voting and to demonstrate his own stated belief that simply modernising and updating the franchise system would be preferable. And there is, of course, the redoubtable Stacey

Abrams, CEO of Fair Fight Action, the voting rights group which she founded and grew with fanatic energy! Her intentions are to go as far as the courts and Congress in the search for franchise fairness; a large part of the Democrats’ recent election successes in Georgia can be attributed to the Herculean efforts of Stacey et al over several years and it is their successes in November 2020 and January 2021 that are causing the unseemly panic to restrict black votes in Georgia [and far beyond]. As voting rights attorney, Marc Elias said on the Rachel Maddow show, on Tuesday last, “in Iowa, in Arizona, in Montana, in Florida, in Texas, in Missouri, in Georgia …..” democracy is under threat in many states through legislation leading to voting suppression.

Absentee Ballot Application.

Voting line somewhere in Georgia.

Ezelstraat 83: Godshuis Sint Joos.

 

Coat of Arms of England 1471.

Part of the original Ezelstraat 83.

Someone drew to my attention recently the Sint Joos Godshuis on Ezelstraat which reputedly had an English connection in its history so I have mined the Internet to discover exactly what. I just love the history of Bruges in all its amazing complexity, echoed in its multiplicity of buildings , bridges, water pumps, canals. Discovering past connections here, often leads to such interesting results.

Ezelstraat 83 is no exception! The Sint Joos hospital was originally established in the late 1340s as a passantenhuis, a house for passers-by providing temporary accommodation for homeless people, vagrants and poor pilgrims, close to the important Ezelpoort. Jacob de Mey and his wife, Liesbette were a prominent burgher and wife who founded the almshouse within the strong tradition of charity provided by the more powerful and rich citizens of Brugge. Gratifyingly, prominent acts of charity like this, also burnished an important person’s already bright credentials. The original buildings comprised a house and nine almshouses, cameren, and they were donated, quite quickly, by the de Mey couple in 1352 to the Sint Joos Guild of which they were members. The Guild had existed before 1287 and had a long history of involvement in municipal charitable works and after 1462, when Louis de Gruuthuse became Dean of the Guild, the foundation membership was further expanded and increased donations resulted, facilitating more opportunities for charitable work.

Louis de Gruuthuse inspecting an
astronomical clock.

One of the main donors in this period, was Bruges nobleman and burgher, Joos de Bol, and from October 9th 1470 he, and Louis de Gruuthuse, both hosted King Edward 1V who had fled England to gather support in Flanders for his fight for the English crown during the prolonged Wars of the Roses [1455-1487] between the Tudors [red rose], the Lancastrians, and the Plantagenets [white rose], Yorkists. Edward stayed in Flanders, usually in Brugge, raising men and finance, until he was able to successfully invade England in April 1472 and resume the throne. To show his gratitude for Flemish loyalty during his exile, Edward awarded Joos de Bol the right to display and wear, the English national flag.

Edward 1V 

Towards the end of the sixteenth century, the passenten and the house became an old people’s home with residents chosen from deserving elderly members of the Guild of basket-bearers or ‘purseekers’, by the Sint Joos Guild and the Stock Exchange Guild. The foundation’s chapel had been inaugurated in 1449 and subsequently in 1585, Canon of Sint Donaas, Joos Lambrecht founded a house of worship there for twelve elderly men. Fourteen rooms were built between 1758 and 1760 after which, eighteen men were able to stay there. Over a long passage of time, deterioration of the buildings gathered pace and by the end of the nineteenth century, the chapel had become a mere depot and the houses been gradually emptied. In the twentieth century, improvements were intermittently carried out [1924; 1955;1994] and five houses remained by 1995.

Louis's magnificent Gruuthuse Palace
where Edward 1V often stayed.

The chapel which had been richly endowed but which had, too, fallen into disrepair, was given a gradual programme of restoration from 1957 culminating in the opening of an ecumenical chapel in 1992. From 1995 the chapel was used for Orthodox worship and a few years later, was set up as an Orthodox Church for the parish of Saints Constantine and Helena. The ecumenical chapel was moved to the adjacent former caretaker’s house in the little complex.

This is the story of an act of  mediaeval charity towards the homeless and poor pilgrims which narrated its way through the ages to finish as an apparently richly-endowed Russian Orthodox Church. Astonishing indeed. Why the Orthodox religion I do not yet know but the journey from poverty to opulence is stunning.

Orthodox Church
Saints Konstantijn & Helena.

Transformation.
From passantenhuis to 
Orthodoxekerk.
1350-1995.
Celebrated 20 years of worship
April 2015.

Edward's signature on the Chronicle he issued, recording his historic arrival back in England and the recovery of his "Kingdomes" from Henry V1 in April 1471.
There were two copies, two versions. One full copy for official English use and one abridged version in French
which was sent to the citizens of Brugge in appreciation of their hospitality.

Lewis Chess Men

 

Splendid Lewis chess pieces from
the late 12th century.

Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit

The Queen's Gambit

was quite a sensation last year and apparently contributed strongly to a resurgence of interest in learning to play the game. By chance, a week ago, I watched another film from 1993 on Netflix, Innocent Moves, featuring an intuitively brilliant 7 year old chess prodigy, who worshipped Bobby Fischer and his success as world chess champion over Boris Spassky, I also noted a passing reference to the Lewis Chess men in an article in the New York Times. As a non-player who can applaud the passion for the game, I decided to unearth the history and possible provenance of the Lewis chess men. They are seriously antique but the current interest is contemporary and underlines the huge attraction this game has held for people over many centuries.

Innocent Moves

In fact chess originated in India as the ancient game of chaturanga; during the reign of King Khosrau of Persia, [531-579] a gift from an Indian Prince to his court included a chess game of 16 pieces of emerald and 16 pieces of ruby [green vs red].After the eventual Islamic conquest of Persia, the game of chess spread, via Andalusian Spain, to mediaeval Europe. It became an important part of elite mediaeval society, a way of practising and demonstrating skill and strategy in a war-like setting. Many of the mediaeval chess pieces are still familiar to those who play today. There were other contemporary games of skill, different from but similar to, chess such as tables and hnefatafl; tables is similar to today’s backgammon and hnefatafl used similar pieces to those in chess such as kings and pawns; a king, surrounded by guards has to reach a corner square before being captured by his opponent. A grid for playing hnefatafl scratched on a piece of stone was found in Inchmarnock in
Scotland, one of 35 playing boards discovered there.

Knights Templar playing chess.

Grid for playing hnefatafl found
in Inchmarnock

The Lewis Chess Men were found, buried on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides; the hoard contained 93 gaming pieces, from at least four chess sets as well as from other games. They were probably made in the late 12^th or early 13^th centuries and the style of the carving links the pieces to Trondheim in Norway; the Lewis figures’ thrones are particularly reminiscent of carving in mediaeval Norwegian churches. Most of the Lewis pieces are made from walrus ivory, probably obtained in Greenland and traded back to Norway but five of the pieces are carved from sperm-whale teeth. All the pieces belong to the Scandinavian world of which the Hebrides were then a part. Certainly at the time the sets were buried, Lewis belonged to the Kingdom of Norway and the culture was a mix of Gaelic and Scandinavian and even after the Isles were ceded to Scotland in 1266, ties to Norway remained close, with the local bishops still part of the bishopric of Trondheim.

The beach at Uig where the chess men were 
discovered.

There is no information as to who buried the chess sets and why. They may have been the valuable property of a merchant sailing from Scandinavia to Scotland, Ireland or the Isle of Man to sell these highly-prized sets. But given the close ties to Norway, Lewis would have been home to some powerful and rich people and the valuable chess men, a treasured possession of a local leader, prince or bishop. No ordinary family could have afforded to own them. But the mystery of their burial, no doubt to hide, keep safe and later retrieve, perhaps during a shipwreck, will never be solved.

The splendid treasure was discovered by Malcolm MacLeod from nearby Pennydonald, in a sand bank at the head of Camas Uig on the west coast of the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland in early 1831. He briefly exhibited them in his byre before selling it all to Captain Roderick Ririe in the same year. Ririe briefly showed the Chess Men on 11^th April 1831 with the Society of Antiquaries after which ten pieces were sold to Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe while the other 67 chessmen and 14 table-men were bought by the British Museum. Somehow, eventually, Sharpe acquired an 11^th piece and sold all eleven fifty years later, in 1888, to Lord Londesborough who sold them on to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland from where they went, donated, to the Royal Scottish Museum of Edinburgh. A resting place in two parts following a chequered career over nine centuries, still magnificently intact. The Lewis Chess Men are a testimony first to supreme artistry; second to good fortune; third to the old urge to preserve evidence of mankind’s earlier days and last, to the strong desire to preserve continuity in our national story.

The beautiful but expensive Warder identified
and sold in July 2019.

Footnote.

After discovering, and writing, the above I stumbled upon the fact that as recently as July 2019 one of the four [always] missing Warders from the Lewis Chess Men, had been sold at Sotheby’s for the unbelievable sum of £735,000 to an anonymous buyer who purchased it from the deceased former owner’s family. It had been in the possession of this previous owner for 55 years after he had purchased it from a Scottish antiques dealer for £5 [1964] The former director of the British Museum, Neil McGregor, in his highly successful and influential History of the World in 100 Objects, included the Lewis Chess Set describing it as illustrating high status, wealth and power in its original owners, and also paying tribute to their knowledge, taste and intellect.

Innocent though proven Guilty.

 

Mitch McConnell [right]
Sean Hannity, Fox News pundit who wants
McConnell sacked.

Is the shameful result of the attempted Trump impeachment an acknowledgement that the central truth of his divisive, vindictive, racist term of office in the White House, is that most Republican senators are too afraid to publicly cross him [and, importantly, his considerable base]. I am impressed with the speech I have just heard made by Mitch McConnell [a statement I never believed I could, or would 

Mike Pence

want to, make] in the Senate, post the impeachment acquittal. Had he only made it earlier THEN crossed the floor to vote for Trump’s impeachment, the persuasive power of it would have been amplified by a factor of ten. But what does the acquittal, underlined by the timing of McConnell’s stinging speech, say about the current Republican Party? “What was once the proud party of Lincoln and Reagan is now a Trump family rag.” as the Guardian says. Trump has abused and disabused it, similar to his total earlier indifference to his namesake university disaster; his bankrupt companies; his huge debts. His vitriol almost caused mortal harm to his loyal Vice-President, as dramatically demonstrated from videos of the rampage. Though Pence and his brother both voted against impeachment and the strange silence of Mike since January 6 suggests at least a lack of leadership and political courage! The very idea that the U.S. is the world’s greatest democracy has always been

Lisa Murkowski; renegade Republican.

laughable; now it is seen as ludicrous. One can guess that the generals in Myanmar are rather enjoying the current American pageant.

T

Bill Cassidy, another renegade.

he few senators who voted for impeachment have apparently been disciplined for their conduct by their local party leaders who presumably echo the feelings of their electorate and in at least one case, been vilified for their efforts by family members! The mystifying popularity of Trump among over 70 million people apparently remains strong and his support seems to be among the former slave states and the rural areas where Church and conservatism are commonplace and racism too, though whisper it not in Gath. According to Heather Cox Robinson in her excellent Letters From An American, in the latest Quinnipiac poll, 75% of Republicans want Trump to continue to lead the party, while 24%-28% blame him for the riot. But there must be, will be, millions of Republicans horrified by the personality and repugnant conduct of the 45^th President, and consequently, by the impeachment debacle and the cowed, dishonest attitude of their representatives. Let us hope that a sensible partition of the Party takes place and a new, sparkling, whiter-than-white [to use a loaded phrase!] version emerges, totally separate from the GOP Trump cult.

Historian Heather Cox Richardson

But the Trump supporters remain, more numerous in the 2020 election than in the 2016. How can this be? It seems they are solid in their metaphorical MAGA hats, red-faced and determinedly looking back as they desperately seek to keep America white, Christian and conservative. No apparent matter to them that America is splendidly diverse now, acknowledging a variety of gods or no god, and gloriously multi-cultural, a state denied, if I remember correctly, by Pompeo in the dying days of the Trump regime. This large and sad minority found its voice briefly in a man with no integrity or understanding of the direction of America’s journey, but with a megaphone-without-consequence, which led, predictably, to the well-planned assault on American democracy. Exhorted and inspired by Trump but well-planned by QAnon and the Oath Keepers.

A satisfying coda to this little diatribe, again from the divine H.C.R: the 57 senators who voted to convict Trump represent 76.7 million more Americans than the 43 senators who voted to acquit.

There is hope, visible even in the seriously anti-Trump Europe!

This is a man

Libraries.

 

Richard Ovenden.

Nazi book-burning May 10th 1933.

The riveting book which I am currently reading, by Richard Ovenden, Director of the Bodleian, Oxford University, begins its Introduction with a description of the burning of books in Nazi Berlin on May 10th 1933. The site of the bonfire, in Unter den Linden, was well chosen; opposite the university, adjacent to St Hedwig’s Cathedral, the Berlin State Opera House, the Royal Palace and Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s war memorial. Simultaneously, book burning was carried out with fervour in ninety other locations in Germany that night. The book burnings, carried out by Hitler Youth in uniform, as a publicity stunt to curry favour with the Nazi Government, centred on thousands of books by Jews and other ‘un-German’ writers like gays and Communists. These anarchic scenes were a clear warning sign of the coming attack on knowledge to be unleashed by the Nazis.

Gathering books for fuel, May 1933.

Ovenden’s point is that Knowledge is still under attack; indeed, is always under attack. The repositories of knowledge have always been libraries and archives and today, funding for these storehouses is constantly reduced while other democratic institutions like the rule of law and open society are similarly, in tandem, under attack. Ovenden’s statement, “Libraries are crucial for the healthy functioning of society” seems self-evident to someone of my generation and background; working class families could afford few books but entry to the municipal library and its treasures was free. I strongly remember the joy of visiting the local library when I was young and also the reverence shown by my mother for books. I also strongly recall my total shock when I saw a fellow pupil in an R.E. lesson, ripping pages from her Bible to encase each finger in a paper-tasselled page to enable her to pretend to play an imaginary piano under the desk. I never had any reverence for the Bible, as such; it was the willful tearing out of pages from a book that shocked me so! My own books now are among a very small group of favourite, cherished possessions, frequently re-visited, re-read; re-enjoyed. Ovenden's book proceeds to demonstrate his anger at both deliberate and accidental failures across the globe to ensure the health and safety of libraries to protect the knowledge entrusted to them.

Wu Guichan

Given that I am currently reading Ovenden’s riveting Burning The Books, I was thrilled this week to read an article in the current issue of Time, describing a man’s life in Nancheng, Dongguan. Wu Guichan was a migrant worker in a small shoe factory earning a modest amount of around 5000 yuan each month. After his arrival in 2003 looking for work, he bought a few cheap books before finding the town’s small library in 2008 where everything was free. He was delighted with the place and thrilled to be able to become a member for the free use of everything. Over the past 20 years, the GDP and consequent size and importance of Dongguan have risen sharply and during this period of increasing prosperity, town authorities have tried to improve the cultural lives of its citizens. In 2002 a huge municipal library was built and two years later it began building an extensive library network; a bus library started to cover a wide area so that factory workers could borrow books freely and without travel. In 2005 Dongguan began offering a 24 hour library service, the first in China and organising free lectures and classes to help migrant workers learn professional skills like lathing and milling. These latter are now available online. In 2012 the American Library Association bestowed on Dongguan Library, its International Innovation Award, a first for a non-American group.

Wu Guichan's heartfelt tribute to 
Dongguan Library.

Wu remained a loyal library-user; he had ended his education at primary school and when he started using Dongguan library, was barely literate. By the time he left in 2020 he was reading classics and devouring around six books each month. In January 2020, unusually, Wu returned to his home village for the Spring Festival and had to remain there because of Covid until June, when he returned to Dongguan, probably, he realised, for the final time as jobs for migrant workers there were very few. He went to the library to return his 12 year old library card and was asked to write in the comments book. He wrote: “Books enlighten people. Due to the Covid 19 pandemic, a lot of factories have closed, migrant workers cannot find jobs and we all choose to go back to our home-towns. Thinking about all my years in Dongguan, the best place for me has always been the library. As much as I want to stay, I cannot but I will never forget you, Dongguan Library.” One of the librarians posted Wu’s comments online and his words quickly went round the Internet causing a leap in the membership of the Dongguan Library. Wu returned home in October and to his delight, discovered the desire of his grand-daughters to read, though no books were available. He had previously been awarded a 6000 yuan book token and he cashed this in and mail-ordered the books they needed. His stated desire now is to build a small library for his home-town.

Our man in his natural habitat

I wrote the above yesterday [12/02/21] after which I discovered that the wonderful Time magazine had not found the entire Wu Story!! Apparently, his online message was quickly seen by Zhao Liping, Director of the Job Services Centre in the Human Resources Bureau of Dongguan who messaged the library to say, " We need to keep such a migrant worker with such a deep love of our city."  And he was able to find a gardening job in a local community for Wu who accepted, delighted to stay in the city with his beloved Dongguan Library. He has now decided to improve his writing which is slow and laboured. Always the autodidact! What an impressive and lovely man.

I am sure this story will have made Richard Ovenden’s heart sing, as it did mine. It is extraordinary  how we all take for granted these apparently mundane institutions, using them and appreciating them in a low-key way but never truly noticing their value. I read with dismay that almost 800 municipal libraries in Britain have closed since 2010, almost a fifth of the total; this is against the backdrop of a 29.6% reduction in council funding for libraries. Councils are cash-strapped because of central Government budget reductions which, in turn, are hard-pressed. But Boris needs to notice this dire situation and appreciate the urgent necessity of libraries. He probably doesn't need or use them, not since the occasional Eton visit long ago, but the country needs its storehouses of knowledge with its functions to protect, preserve and transmit. And these must be independent from the currently huge commercial, digital realm.

Rural bus library, Britain..
Similar to that in earlier years in Dongguan.

Dongguan Library now.

Titbits.

 

Jake Angeli
QAnon shaman [organic]

Proud Boy Leader: Enrique Tarrio

Still trying to wean myself off the obsession with American politics and I have just read something which helps a lot. Apparently Enrique Tarrio, swaggering leader of the Proud Boys all seeking to protect their traditional notions of Real Masculinity by behaving like thugs, has been an active collaborator with the FBI and local law investigators, since his arrest in 2012. Poor Enrique. His lawyer spilled the beans in court and he, Enrique, is left to deny it all in a desperate search to keep his street cred. Life’s not easy for a leader of Proud Boys. Trump would understand; he gets easily hurt. Almost as sweet as the recent item that the one in the Capitol riot dressed in horns and tattoos, Jake Angeli, lives with his Mum and it was she who had to take up the cudgels on his behalf recently, to ensure he was served organic food in prison. It’s the little details which so delight!

Jan van Eyckplein in December

And so to Beloved Brugge. Pretty well every day I walk through Jan Van Eyckplein and admire it all; the canal, the statue, the architecture, the cobblestones, the golden feather on the ridge of the House of the American Calligrapher. As half of Bruges seems to be dug up or has been dug up, during lockdown, acts of clever Municipal maintenance with least upheaval given the emptiness of the town, it should not have been surprising to witness the swift removal of the splendid miniature forest of Christmas trees in Jan Van Eyckplein, with them and their myriad lights all gone by December 27 followed by the subsequent
uprooting of cobblestones. Actually, they aren’t real cobblestones; they are tiles which both continue the look of cobblestones and make walking easier. No matter; they have lain, piled high and forlorn

Artist at work

, behind wire fencing, at one end of Jan Van Eyckplein for weeks. Until around a week ago when a small, lone workman started to use a sort of dumper, a Bellcat, to flatten the earth properly before beginning to re-lay the tiles, working, on his knees, solo for day after day!! It must be a fine feeling to work hard and look back at such perfection. I hope so; it is certainly superb to witness the activity and artistry of this one person! Days after writing the above, after several days of rain preventing any activity, I note that the surface of Jan Van Eyckplein is still unfinished but beautiful. Our artist will soon be back!

Late and costly but beloved already

I have experienced, first-hand, one downside of Brexit this week. My youngest daughter and her daughter chose, online, a bracelet from Sarah Pacini in Brugge, for my Christmas present. On discovering online, that it was only possible to send it to whoever ordered, she rang up the Bruges’ shop and they agreed to post it to me. [I live about ten minutes’ walk from the shop.] This was about two weeks before Christmas. The parcel was delivered to my daughter in Suffolk in January and she re-addressed it and posted it to me, having first filled in a Customs form and paid £15. I collected the aforementioned, on Tuesday of this week from the main Post Office here and had to pay 41 euros. One hears every morning on Radio 4 people lamenting the present chaos in import/ezport, especially with fish.

Signpost to the Future.

Firms are clinging on despite, as one owner lamented yesterday, "We haven’t sent a single oyster to Europe since January 1^st. We’ve tried but an eighteen hour wait in France for a lorry of perishable food is just not feasible. We used to send daily lorry loads.” I cannot actually quote the myriad reassurances pre-December 31^st 2020, of how quick and easy Brexit would be; how none of us would notice the difference unless things were better, etc. There was a plenitude of platitudes from Boris and Gove, many untrue at best; mischievous at worst, indeed almost criminal, which ring hollow in the face of the current chaos and extra taxes. I did make a note several years ago, no doubt written by a clever Remainer, of a definition of Brexit. It is “the undefined being negotiated by the unprepared in order to get the unspecified for the uninformed.” Definitely clever though it neglects to mention the lies and incompetence.

Fishy complaint.