Forgotten Songs

I've been keen to see the Forgotten Songs artwork for some time now. This week I had my chance, and I wasn't disappointed.

Forgotten Songs was initially a temporary laneway artwork program in Sydney in 2009-2010. Thankfully it wasn't lost to us and was recommissioned as part of an upgrade to Angel Place in 2012.

Forgotten Songs commemorates 50 bird species once heard in central Sydney before European settlement. These birds disappeared from the area as Sydney developed.

During the day the songs of these missing birds ring out above your head from their empty cages. 

I saw one of these beautiful birds just last weekend
(not in Sydney though)

As we went to a concert that night at City Recital Hall I got to go back in the evening. It was raining though so we didn't really hang around. At night the nocturnal bird calls are played. 

I'd long thought that Forgotten Songs reminded me of Dickens' Miss Flight in Bleak House. And what did I find in Dymocks that very same day? 

Art imitating life?
Life imitating art?

Actually it looks like Penguin have a lovely new set of Dickens hard back editions. I might really need these.

Forgotten Songs
Angel Place (just off George St, near Martin Place) 
Sydney

Saturday Snapshot is a wonderful weekly meme
 now hosted by WestMetroMommy

Charles Dickens Museum

Sometimes interests just align and even though you have a packed four days in London (that isn't enough time, not nearly enough time, there is just so much to do), you know that you have to make a pilgrimage of sorts. And so it was I came to visit Charles Dickens House in London last year.

Not that I'm a great Dickens scholar. I suspect that having read A Christmas Carol, The Magic Fishbone and half of Bleak House (twice) doesn't qualify me. But I am interested in Dickens. I think that Bleak House is one of the best books that I've only half read. I've seen Simon Callow speak about him, and portray him. I've seen Miriam Margolyes astonishing one woman play Dickens Women twice now. I've watched the Dr Who episode. And bits and pieces of various BBC miniseries too of course. One day I will embark on my  project to read all of Dickens.

Still I thoroughly enjoyed the hour or so I spent in Dickens Museum on a somewhat cool Thursday morning.

I didn't have the time to do a walk,
and I was there on a Thursday,
maybe next time?

You get to see upstairs

and downstairs

Learn about Victorian housekeeping practices-
hedgehogs!

And think about how long the laundry took!
Once a year the copper would be cleaned
and used to boil the Christmas pudding

There's great memorabilia
Dickens' lectern that he designed and
used for his reading tours

His writing desk

his deathbed

and even his commode

It's a fascinating place to spend an hour or so

I was tempted by the action figure but it would have meant
one less jar of Caramel Beurre Sale to bring home from Paris-
no contest really...

It was certainly 8 pounds well spent. 

Charles Dickens Museum 

48 Doughty Street, London

Take a fun trip to the British Isles
every Friday with Joyweesemoll

London

Perhaps I should try and read something more learn-ed when travelling, but I do enjoy the Horrible Histories franchise, and had already bought the London title, so it was an obvious book to include for my holiday reading. It made great reading on my Paris Gare du Nord to London St Pancras Eurostar train. 

I've read a few Horrible History books now and reading London has certainly confirmed the notion that every place has a bloody, and rather Horrible history. We may now think of the English as a gentle, well mannered people but that certainly has not always been the case. Indeed they were a rather blood thirsty and brutal lot. 

London was named after King Lud, pre-Roman king of Britain. Lud-dum.

The Romans arrived in 55BC led by Julius Caesar, and they were to stay until 410AD. Caesar's presence is commemorated as his sword is still on the London coat of arms, and is quite visible all over the city. 

On grand dragon statues

And simple traffic bollards

It is thought that Boudicca is buried under Platform 8 at King's Cross Station. 

The real Dick Whittington story does not involve a cat, the cat version was made up 200 years after his death. 

The English had particularly dreadful sports and entertainments involving their animals. Bear, bull and badger baiting were practised for well over 700 years before being banned in the 19th century. 

Of course their bloodthirsty nature didn't end at watching animals die hideous deaths, they were also very fond of public executions.  Most of the people to die at the Tower of London were not beheaded- 7 were beheaded inside the grounds of the Tower the rest were hung outside so that large crowds of people could watch.There was a special gibbet constructed at Tyburn so that 24 people could be hung together. 

Executioners were not always precise in their acts, and sometimes relatives would tug at the dying so that they would die more quickly. It was rather fascinating to read that the body and clothes of the dead then belonged to the executioner and that the family would need to buy them back. The heads that were displayed on poles were of course prone to rotting so they were boiled in salt or painted with tar to make them last longer. 

London tells us that a horrified Charles Dickens attended the executions of the Cato Street Conspirators in 1820 who were beheaded after they were hung as traitors.

There are also wonderful and gory descriptions of plague arriving in London in 1348.

And the interesting beliefs of the time:

London was a perfect introduction for me. 

The Magic Fishbone

Well, what a funny little book this is!

One of Charles Dickens's lesser known works. I'm not the biggest Dickens scholar it must be said, but I wondered if it was one of his earlier works, but it is actually one of his later works, written in 1867 (he died in 1870).

A rather bizarre book. Princess Alicia is the oldest child of a rather poor king, King Watkins the First, and his queen who have a rather astonishing 19 children from 7 years to 7 months.

The Fairy Grandmarina, an old lady "dressed in shot-silk of the richest quality and smelling of dried lavender", comes to visit King Watkins at the fishmonger, after he buys a pound and a half of salmon. She directs the king to share the salmon with Princess Alicia and to give her a fish bone- and that she must dry it, rub it and polish it until it shines like mother or pearl. The fish bone will then be magic, and grant a wish, provided she wishes for it at the right time.

I did love that the queen swooned her way out of the story really. Princess Alicia of course revives her mother the queen with smelling salts. And I don't know that you can end books these days by choking the annoying little dog, mores the pity....

I was lucky and found a lovely old edition illustrated by FD Bedford and published in 1921 at a local op shop.  It has clearly been loved, or at least used by some previous child readers as they have coloured in some of the line drawings in the book.

196/1001

Melbourne Writers Festival Opening Night

I've already done a few posts about the Melbourne Writers Festival, but it all kicked off with this one. Opening night. Always a big night. Melbourne Town Hall. 

It's always packed.

I've been to Opening Night before, another corker, Clive James back in 2007! Five years is too long between festivals. Opening Night the excitement is palpable, we're at the front end of 350 events, and they've sold 60,000 festival tickets.

The Age Book of the Year Awards are announced at opening night. The Age Book of the Year for 2012, and the Non-Fiction Book of the Year is James Boyce's 1835: The Founding of Melbourne and the Conquest of Australia. The Fiction winner Gillian Mears' Foal's Bread. Poetry winner Mal McKimmie's The Brokenness Sonnets I-III and Other Poems. James Boyce looked well chuffed and completely surprised by his big win.

Simon Callow hit the stage and the room was held spellbound. He's a magnificent orator. He spoke, without notes, in his extraordinary fashion for about an hour. Yes he knows his topic of Dickens inside and out, and I'm sure he could rattle this off on any given day. I'd seen Simon Callow's production of The Mystery of Charles Dickens 10 years ago in Sydney, so most of the material wasn't new to me, but it's still wondrous to be in the same room with such a presence. And we had fabulous seats in the front row!

Simon spoke of his introduction to Dickens as a 7 year old boy seeing a production of A Christmas Carol that scared the hell out of him. Later at 13 when afflicted with chicken pox "a medieval torture of an illness", he was in misery until his grandmother placed The Pickwick Papers in his hands. He was immediately immersed in Dickens world- huge, larger than life characters, an England that he immediately recognised. He began reading his books one after the other. And has never stopped.

Simon Callow was here this night largely to talk about Dickens and the theatre, given his new book Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World. He described Dickens' public readings as a "unique and staggering theatrical experience". He had an extraordinary ear for accents, and created voice after voice, he would hardly move from the lectern. He often rewrote the texts for his public readings, or wrote new texts. He knew that his work came to life when read aloud, and Callow tells us that this sense of theatre was absolutely inherent in his work.

Queen Victoria herself was a great fan of his readings, as were the British public, who felt that Dickens spoke for them. Simon Callow believes that it was the exertions of his public readings that killed Dickens. On his final tour he had a swollen left foot, he was on crutches and could hardly walk. He finally met Queen Victoria whom he had "sedulously avoided" until that time.

Dickens forbade any statue to be erected in his honour, and to this day there is no statue of him in Britain. There's one in Sydney, but none in Britain. He wanted his books to be his monuments. I really must read them. I've only ever finished A Christmas Carol, and still say that Bleak House is the best book that I've half read twice.

If you weren't lucky enough to be at Melbourne Writers Festival, you can share in the experience with Books and Arts Daily on our Radio National who are sharing In Conversation with Simon Callow on their website, and you can listen to this wonderful man. I hope this link works internationally, but don't know if it does.

A Christmas Carol Read Along

What perfect timing. I was planning to read A Christmas Carol this year anyway.  I've been wanting to read it for a few years now. I did start a library copy a few years ago. Got stuck, had to take it back unfinished. Over the past few years I think I've seen every movie version of A Christmas Carol with my son- high budget modern spectaculars, low budget oldies, muppet versions and not. But this is the year I'm actually going to read it.

I've already scheduled it as our Christmas read for 1001 Children's Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up. I've bought my own copy, so I can't give up. And it's a nice one. Large format, fake leather bound, illustrations by Quentin Blake- who I adore. I have to finish it. And now there's a blog read along at the exact same time. Too much synchronicity to ignore. I will be reading it. Oh yes. And then I won't have to hang my head in shame any longer at never having finished a Dickens. Sure it will be his shortest published work, but I will still have Read A Dickens. Although I do often toy with the notion that half reading Bleak House twice may actually count as Read A Dickens.