Change is inevitable

Isabel Colegate's The Shooting Party gives away the end of the story on the first page: "It caused a mild scandal at the time, ... an error of judgment which resulted in a death." The book then describes events leading up to the incident, which takes place a few months before the outbreak of WW1, when Sir Randolph invites a group of privileged people to take part in a shoot at Nettleby Park. The old-fashioned peer has "all but bankrupted the estate" to entertain the late King.

The upper class characters include Sir Randolph's wife Minnie who "likes a house full"; his daughter Ida, "a matter-of-fact sort of person"; his grand-daughter Cicely who is "flirting with the Hungarian Rakassyi"; his ten-year-old grandson Osbert, worried about a pet duck. Of the guests, Gilbert Hartlip is "one of the best shots in England", his wife Aline is having an affair with Charles Farquhar, "a person of no significance" but also a good shot. Then there's Lord Lilburn, "a bit of an ass", whose wife Olivia is "widely admired" for her "natural look", especially by love-struck Lionel Stephens who writes poetry.

The lower classes include Glass the gamekeeper and his only son Dan, poacher Tom Harker who makes up the beater numbers at the last minute, animal rights supporter Cornelius Cardew, and the servants who work in the house. One of these, Ellen, was the only character I found to be engaging, although the guests obviously have no idea who she is.

I warmed to Ellen but no-one else, and kept on reading to find out who died. I don't much care about the disappearance of the Edwardian era's upper classes and their activities (although pheasant shoots still take place in 21st century England). Was the shoot a metaphor for the Great War? Perhaps Colegate wanted to comment on the rise of industrialisation and the fall of "traditional" country activities? Change is inevitable, and the older generation generally don't like it. Sir Randolph considers that after WW1, the new age "embodied changes for the worse, a sort of mass loss of memory, and the replacement of the common understandings of a civilised society by the destructive egotism of a barbaric one."

It's Friday, it's five to five...

I must have been watching BBC's Crakerjack! aged six or seven, but all these years later, if someone says "It's Friday", my next thought is always, "It's five to five". So here's Friday's verse a triolet celebrating a kids' telly programme.

It's Friday night, it's five to five,
it's Crackerjack!
Oh what a time to be alive;
it's Friday night, it's five to five,
and on TV, a party vibe.
Hear that 'crack'-ing word? Shout back!
It's Friday night, it's five to five,
it's Crackerjack!

This is Thursday

The 1970s, IMHO, was the best decade for music, and you could get it all on Top of the Pops on Thursday evening.

Every teen in 70s Britain
on Thursday evenings would be sitting
at half past seven, in front of the box,
eagerly anticipating Top of the Pops.

Wednesday: half-day closing

Here's my verse for Wednesday.

Before the birth of the online store
buying goods was quite a chore,
and woe betide the afternoon shopper
who, mid-week, might come a cropper
'cos many a town across the country
had half-day closing, every Wednesday.

Not much to say about Tuesday

I thought I might as well write a rhyme for Tuesday too. Here's a Tuesday limerick:

Here's Tuesday, there's not much to say;
its child in the rhyme's full of grace.
With a spiritual bent,
the last before lent
is for pancakes and stuffing your face.

Monday starts the working week...

A lttle senior rhyme to start off the week:

Monday starts the working week
but not for senior retirees
whose waking thoughts are nearly always
"another day, but which one is this?"

Much, much too rich for his own good

Before picking up The Hare With Amber Eyes, I was under the impression it was fiction. My heart sank on discovering it's a family memoir. I'm not a fan of this sort of non-fiction unless it's warts-and-all, or humorous and self-deprecating. But it was a Book Club choice, so I swiped to the first page and began reading.

The book's set in late 19th century Europe, WW1, and the inter-war years of the 20th century. French art and literature loom large, both of which are interests of mine. So far so good. As for the family, it takes in three generations of the Ephrussi bankers, from whom de Waal is descended. He says, "I know that my family were Jewish, of course, and I know they were staggeringly rich". He traces these ancestors using a collection of 264 netsuke as a device, moving through generations and locations according to who owns the small Japanese carvings, one of which is the titular amber-eyed hare.