CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 15years old!
Well done to ALL posters
It soon became useful and entertaining. There are regular posters, people who add useful info occasionally and plenty more who drop by to watch. That's fine. If you want to add news/comments it's easy to register and become a member.
RULES No personal insults. No swearing.
I adored Swallows and Amazons and the subsequent volumes. Read the copies that my old man had kept from his childhood.
The telegram from their father; 'Better drowned than duffers.' seems now to hint at the fascist mindset commonplace in thirties Britain, the children's response to it is gloriously socialist in some ways. Must read them again next time I visit the ancestral heap.
"Long enough ago to not think anything unusual about 'free range kids' - that was my life then - and overnight camping without adults.
But now? How do parents explain the 'impossibilities' of it all??!"
Depends. No.1 son is a Cub Scout, so likes camping, archery, etc. Obviously still grown ups around at camp but not parents. Also reads a lot of 'fantasy' literature so is used to situations which are not 'realistic': S&A in 'plausible fantasy' category these days?
but this is a central trope of children's lit - Enid Blyton etc
What is wonderful about Ransome is that he is so realistic/practical about it all (with the exception of toilets of course)
@Min indeed I would have had I known (although I didn't own the book at this point, it still would have floated my boat).
Did you solve it?
No, sadly not. I don't think it ever can be solved. I did manage to clear up a few minor points though and it was very fascinating to research. There was a documentary about it the other week which we recorded and it also had Keith McCloskey in it but it was total gash. There is no way you can "rule out" a giant wave. What about all the damage?
I'll stop now!
"with the exception of toilets of course"
Toilets are missing from most literature. I'm struggling to think of a scene from any of the classics that takes place in a shunky. Other than Trainspotting bien sûr.
There's some great film scenes - No Country for Old Men and Unforgiven spring to mind.
There's a challenge to CCE. Great literary cludgie moments?
I read (devoured) all the swallows and amazons books when I was a young sailor. I was lucky enough to spend time in the lakes (mostly windermere) hitchhiking around and sailing on a borrowed wayfarer and recreating some of thee voyages at the age of 16 for a few weeks (back in 2002 so not that long ago) Pretty certain my parents didn't even notice I was gone and maybe only found it slightly concerning that there were so many cans of beans missing from the cupboards.
I've also read (and own) all of the sharp books.
On another note I do have a large box of books that would be accessible to anyone looking to expand their library.
"Great literary cludgie moments?"
Louis de Bernières, Iain (M) Banks and Bruce Robinson have some scenes in toilets. Was the "I have prior business" bit in True Grit in the book?
@IWRATS - one 'toilet' scene does spring to mind although it's more 'gents dressing room' than 'cludgie'.
In John Buchan's 'Greenmantle', the daring Richard Hannay is masquerading as an American-German engineer in Istanbul. However his disguise fails when he receives a visit from a young Turkish official who'd been pursuing him a couple of chapters earlier. Hannay is described as being surprised whilst 'at his toilet' (admittedly this means he's in PJs and having a wash etc rather than ablutions).
Hannay and the indestructible Pieter Pienaar beat the Turkish fop into unconciousness (Pienaar frisbees a tray of tea things at him as I recall), tie him up and lock him in a wardrobe. At which point the femme fatale of the piece (Hilda Von Einem) enters the scene.
"I adored Swallows and Amazons and the subsequent volumes. Read the copies that my old man had kept from his childhood."
Yes, I read and re-read my dad's dog-eared childhood copy. I think my niece has it now.
There was a bit on Countryfile* recently about Ransome, including some sailing on the Nancy Blackett.
Thinking about it again, S&A was quite a tome wasn't it? Kids devouring it (and other lengthy books like LOTR or Harry Potter) kind of disproves the notion that modern day kids have a short attention span. They just need something that consumes their interest.
*My guilty pleasure is watching Countryfile on a Sunday night with a nice bottle of ale. Something about its gentle pastoral pace lets me relax before the inevitable Monday morning feeling.
@wingpig
You just made me spend half an hour looking at True Grit quotes. Enjoy!
Another Swallow & Amazons fan here. We had 1930s editions bound in green which my mother had from her childhood (I think, though that cannot be right as she was born during WW2. She has older siblings, though, so maybe the books were theirs and passed on? Anyway.)
Neices don't seem to be into them yet, but I was read some Road Dahl and a book about faries (new to me) when I was down visiting.
At the moment I'm reading some trashy SF which is my guilty pleasure...
In John Buchan's 'Greenmantle'
John Buchan has a thriller set in the 18th century Berwickshire called the "Free Fishers". He uses the old verb throughout for readying ones-self of "toileting". The characters are therefore frequently being referred to as "doing their toilet."
It's a thriller in Buchan's usual, well-written style, but I prefer it to the Hannay thrillers as the constant reminder of white (e.g. British Empire) man's supremacy over the black/brown/yellow and especially the European man is notably absent.
"We had 1930s editions bound in green"
Gilt lettering, hand-drawn maps on the inside cover? Ah!
IWRATS. Indeed, those.
Do modern editions still have Ransome's illustrations? I seem to recall he did them himself although he couldn't draw particularly well, and would get friends to pose for photos that he'd then draw from.
lots of green hardbacks (and bluepaperbacks, which i almost like more) still available secondhand.
My brother had the blue paperback editions, the whole set, back in the early 1980s. I think they were a birthday pressie.
Even more recent editions have his drawings inside, part of the charm. They are actually rather good drawings: "economy of means" is the catchword. You can see the influence of Japanese prints on some of them.
Ransome was an interesting character. Lived in Russia pre-and post-revolution, then Estonia. Married Trotsky's secretary!
Ransome's "Old Peter's Russian Tales" is also a good read.
The fimm family actually has two complete sets of the "Swallows & Amazons" books. The original set was a mixture of the green hardbacks and the blue paperbacks. They are now in my sister's house awaiting a new generation of readers. However at some point my parents came across a complete set of the green hardbacks in a jumble sale, bought them and still have them in their house.
"We had 1930s editions bound in green"
I have a set of 28 of 30 Complete works of Dickens bound in green. Circa 1886.
I'll dish out some book envy later.... ;)
IWRATS - I think you will find a very very detailed Cludgie scene (outside jakes as Dublin 1904 describes it) in James Joyce's Ulysses.
Leopold Bloom the hero is doing the toilet (Oooh, my wife hates the use of this term)
The final line in the very long description from memory is
"It did not move nor touch him but was something quick and neat, life might be so".
I once emptied the entire Martello Tower audience reciting this chapter. Schoolboyo error as the punchline is good but best to just say all what I have just mentioned quickly then cut to the last para.
My recitation of Joyce has benefited from this learning over the years and I was latterly (well 2004) a success in various boozers by skipping huge chunks and just doing the funny bits.
Also the novel True Grit is rendered verbatim in the Coen Bros. film. Pretty much all the wiki quotes are also from the novel by Charles Portis. It is a great book with a real heroine. The narrator is not keen on The James or YOunger outlaws at all. I also love the COen Bros movie and the original is not too bad.
@Baldcyclist -
Is it complete if there are 2 volumes missing?
@gembo
Excellent, thanks. Joyce has always defeated me. I think he's the only writer I just can't read.
I will recite on Friday if you like?
you can get a CD of Bishop Brennan reading Ulysses
@galaxy Yes, and no, well actually just no.
For some reason I though it was called 'The Complete works of Dickens", but alas it is just 'The Works....'. I thought the 'Complete' was in the title, not the number...
Anyway I promised book porn, so here it is (if Google drive sharing works)...
OK, try twitter images, even twitter are trying to hide images now, have to go look at the source.
ADMIN EDIT
Can only put images (usually .jpg) in IMG tags - not the page links.
A presumption of death - Jill Paton Walsh and Dorothy Sayers
The Blue castle - LM Montgomery
Return of the king - Tolkien
One summer America 1927 - Bill Bryson
Roads weren't built for cars - carlton read
Eritrea at a crossroads - andebrhan weldegirgis
Mostly things I started on holiday/work travel this summer /took with me in half term /still have by the bedside. Except weldegirgis and read who I've downloaded recently
Baldcyclist: very very nice.
Do I smell rich mahogany? ;-)
@SRD I thought I owned every Dorothy L Sayers novel out there, but I've never come across that one!
There are two written by Jill Paton Walsh based on partial MSs I think. Not bad.
You're welcome to borrow them if you like.
Oh I see! Thank you for the offer. I might do some googling and see what AbeBooks can do for me. Collector's brain, you see.
Having read them I wouldn't really recommend Jill Paton Walsh's Peter Wimsey books. Sayers' humour is missing and most of the cleverness too. And she ends up doing monstrous things to some of the secondary recurring characters.
OTOH Dorothy L. Sayers' own Lord Peter Wimsey books are essential reading for anyone who enjoys a good murder mystery. Clever, funny, absorbing, endlessly rereadable. My favourite is the last of them, Busman's Honeymoon, described by Sayers as "A love story with detective interludes".
If you like Sayers, you might also enjoy Josephine Tey if you haven't tried her books before.
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