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Episode image is a detail of a photograph taken by Charles Adrian.
Is this, in fact, a cherry tree? (Photograph taken by Charles Adrian)
Talking of pink blossom, black shorts with turn-up and things that aren’t exactly books, Charles Adrian revisits The Nutcracker, the Altocumulus lenticularis and the oldest living woman in the universe.
Gavin Pretor-Pinney also founded the Cloud Appreciation Society, which you can find out about here.
Books (etc) discussed in this episode were previously discussed in Page One 27 and Page One 29.
A transcript of this episode is below.
Episode recorded: 11th April, 2020.
Episode released: 2nd June, 2020.
Book listing:
The Nutcracker and The Strange Child by E. T. A. Hoffmann (trans. Anthea Bell) (Page One 27)
The Cloudspotter’s Guide by Gavin Pretor-Pinney (Page One 27)
OutThere Magazine: The Style Issue ed. Martin Perry and Uwern Jong (Page One 29)
Links:
Episode transcript:
Jingle
You're listening to Page One, the book podcast.
Charles Adrian
Hello and welcome to the 163rd Page One. This is the 7th Page One In Review. I'm Charles Adrian and today I'm going to be talking about three more of the books that I've been given by guests on the podcast over the last eight years - although even as I say that I realised that that's not entirely true. I'm going to be talking about two books that I have been given by guests... although one of those isn't really a book. So: one book that I've been given by a guest, one other thing that I've been given by a guest - I'll talk more about that when we get there - and then another book but not one that was given to me by a guest. Let's... I'll... I'll maybe talk about all of that as we come to the things.
Yeah, that's... the details of that are not important right now, are they? Right now, I wanted to tell you that today is the... it's Saturday the 11th of April, 2020. It's exactly a week since I stood here and told you that I was wearing my very stylish black dungaree shorts. It's also a very, very beautiful sunny day today so I am still wearing shorts - but not my dungaree shorts today. I'm wearing... they're also black but they are... yeah, just not dungarees. They do have turn-ups, though, so I feel no less stylish while I'm wearing these than I feel when I'm wearing my dungarees. What else can I... [laughing] what else can I tell you?
Oh! There's been a lot of very beautiful pink blossom on the trees around where I live so when I've been out and about on my daily exercise over the last couple of days, I've really noticed that... although... there... there's been blossom out for a while of different sorts but this particular... and it's not... I don't think they're cherry trees. It's not that pale cherry-blossom pink. I'm not very good with trees but I'm pretty sure that when I've seen photographs of Japanese cherry blossom festivals and so on, that... it's a... it's a much paler pink, isn't it? It's a, kind of... Cherry blossom is a kind of whitish pink, isn't it? Or a pinkish white. Am I...?
[rumbling noise getting louder]
Perhaps I'm wrong about that. Perhaps this is cherry b... Anyway, it's a very, very pink pink that's come out on the trees and it's just gorgeous. It's been really wonderful seeing that over the last couple of days. And for whatever reason, in the small area near my flat in which I do my daily exercise, there are quite a few of those trees so that's been a real pleasure and I wanted to share that with you. Oh, there's a very noisy train going past. Some kind of rail freight train. Anyway.
[rumbling noise dies away]
All that said, let's get on with the episode.
[page turning]
The first book that I wanted to talk to you about today is a book and it was given to me by a guest so this one fully conforms to the quote unquote rules of this particular form of the podcast. This was given to me during the 27th Page One by Anna Sulan Masing. We had a wonderful conversation in the Wilton Way Cafe in Hackney and... yes, she gave me this: The Nutcracker and The Strange Child by E. T. A. Hoffman.
This is a Pushkin Press edition. The cover is pink actually, talking of pink. I'm not... I'm really no better with colours than I am with trees and particularly pink I find difficult to... I don't know... I, ki... I find... There's a - I don't know whether anybody else finds this - there's a... there's a point where pink becomes orange that I find very difficult to... to parse, as it were. But I think... I'm pretty sure this is pink rather... It's... Yeah, it's certainly not orange but it's a, kind of... either a powder pink or a, kind of, dusty pink or... I'm... I wanted to say salmon pink but it's not... I mean, that does look orange to me and this is not that.
Anyway. It's a lovely colour and not quite square. It's not a normal, kind of, paperback format, which I tend to think of as being two by one - so, you know, one unit across and two up and down. This is a bit more... This is a bit wider than that so it's closer to being square. But a very comfortable book in the hand. Quite a thick cover, although a paperback, and it has flaps so it's a little bit like... it's almost like it's a paperback pretending to be a hardback, which I find charming.
I... It's another one of those books that I don't remember anything about. I don't even remember whether or not I liked it. I think I probably did. I have a feeling it was quite a strange book... quite a strange couple of stories. I don't know the the ballet of The Nutcracker very well. I... you know, saw it probably once when I was a child and it didn't make any sense to me at all. I had no idea what was going on. Lots of people in different costumes dancing about for no reason that I could understand. I think this was a little easier to follow in the... you know, in the... in prose form but that's all I... that's all I can tell you about it.
Between pages 90 and 91 there are a few torn-off bits of paper acting as a bookmark so I thought I'd just read from there, not having any reason to read any particular section rather than any other. So this is a chapter called The Kingdom Of Toys. It comes quite near the end of The Nutcracker. This... In this edition The Nutcracker finishes on page 115 and this obviously starts on page 91. And, having glanced through it, I do really like this... the opening of this chapter. Anybody who's familiar with C. S. Lewis's The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe will spot a parallel here, in that E. T. A. Hoffman also uses a wardrobe as a gateway to an imaginary world. I think E. T. A. Hoffman's version is more interesting and more... almost more exquisite than - I think that would be the word I would use - than... than C. S. Lewis's version. And then the word that they go into is really very... it's a little too sugary, perhaps, as you'll see, but also very, very beautiful. And, having talked about all of the pink blossom that is around where I live at the moment, this... it feels appropriate to read this:
I IMAGINE THAT NOT ONE OF YOU, children, would have hesitated for a moment to follow that honest and good-natured Nutcracker, who had never in his life entertained an unkind thought. Marie was all the more inclined to do so because she knew what a claim she had on his gratitude, and was sure he would be as good as his word and show her many marvels.
So she said, “I will happily go with you, Mr Drosselmeier, but it mustn't be far and it mustn't take too long, because I haven't been to sleep at all yet tonight.”
Sorry, as I read this, I'm getting just “Stranger Danger! Stranger Danger!” playing in the background of my brain. But anyway, this is a different... a different time, isn't it - nineteenth century - when this was... [laughing] I don't know when it was first... Yeah, 1819-21 this was first published. Things were different then. Not different in the sense that... Anyway. Well. So. No. I'll leave that.
“In that case,” replied Nutcracker, “I will choose the nearest although not the easiest way.” And he went ahead, with Marie following him, until he stopped outside the large old wardrobe in the corridor. To her surprise, Marie saw that the doors of the wardrobe, which were usually kept locked, stood wide open, and she could clearly see the fox-fur coat that her father wore when he went on a journey hanging right at the front. Nutcracker climbed very nimbly up the wooden frame of the wardrobe and its carved decorations, until he could take hold of the large tassel that, fastened to a stout piece of string, hung down the back of the fox fur. As soon as Nutcracker gave the tussle a good pull a very pretty cedar-wood staircase came down through the fur sleeve of the coat. “Just climb up, dear lady,” cried Nutcracker.
Marie did as he said, but as soon as she had climbed up through the sleeve to the collar of the coat and looked out at the top of it, a blinding light met her eyes, and all of a sudden she was standing in a wonderfully fragrant meadow, with millions of sparks that glittered like jewels rising from the air.
“We're in Sugar-Candy Meadow,” said Nutcracker, “but we'll be going through that gate in a moment.” And only now, looking up, did Marie see the beautiful gateway not far away from them in the meadow. It seemed to be built of white, brown and raisin-coloured marble, but when Marie came closer she saw that it was made of sugared almonds and raisins baked together, and consequently, as Nutcracker told her, the gate through which they would pass was called Almond and Raisin Gate, although common people called it, very improperly, Student-Fodder Gate.
Just... side note: that joke will make more sense to German speakers or people who are familiar with German-speaking countries in which you can buy nuts and raisins in little packets and it's called ‘Studentenfutter’, which means student fodder. Just by the way.
On a gallery above this gate and apparently made of barley sugar, six little monkeys in pink doublets were playing the finest Turkish janissary music ever heard, so that Marie hardly noticed that she was walking on and on over coloured and marbled tiles, which in fact were nothing but finely worked slabs of boiled sugar. Soon the sweetest of scents wafted towards them from a wonderful little wood opening up on both sides. There was such a gleaming and sparkling in the foliage that you could clearly see gold and silver fruits hanging from brightly coloured stems, and the trunks and branches of the trees were adorned with ribbons and bunches of flowers, like happy brides and bridegrooms and their cheerful wedding guests. And when the scent of orange blossom wafted like a gentle breeze, the branches and leaves rustled, and thin, shiny strips of metal foil crinkled and crackled in the air, making a sound like cheerful music, while the sparkling little lights hopped and danced up and down.
“Oh, how lovely it is here!” cried Marie happily, enchanted by the sight.
“We are in Christmas Tree Wood, dear lady,” said Nutcracker.
“I would love to spend a little longer here,” Marie went on. “It's so beautiful!”
And I don't know why it didn't occur to me before but it's only just occurred to me that there are also, of course, echoes of... - or pre-echoes? I don't know what the word for a pre-echo would be, but... - of Roald Dahl's Charlie And The Chocolate Factory with the Nutcracker morphing into Willy Wonka in Roald Dahl's version.
[page turning]
Okay, the second book that I want to talk to you about today is... So this is also a book but this is not a book that I was given by a guest. I... While we were hovering around the 27th Page One, my conversation with Anna Sulan Masing, I wanted to take the opportunity to talk about The Cloudspotter's Guide by Gavin Pretor-Pinney, which was the book that I gave to Anna. She gave me The Nutcracker and The Strange Child by E. T. A. Hoffman and I gave her The Cloudspotter's Guide. Not this copy, obviously, that I'm holding in my hand right now - I gave her the... my original copy, which I'd read twice while on an artists' retreat in a place called Polverigi, which is near Ancona on the east coast of Italy.
What I [laughing] wanted to read to you from this... The whole book is wonderful! All... I mean, all clouds are fascinating. The clouds, they're the... they're the stars of the daytime, aren't they? In the previous episode I talked about, you know, how I sometimes go out onto my roof and... and look at the stars at nighttime - during the day, I will just go out there and look at the clouds. There are always clouds in London. I mean, I suppose there must be days when the sky is blue but even then there's a... you know, there will be a haze. And it's very, very rare to find a day when there are no clouds visible at all. And there are clouds of all kinds of different types. Today is a particularly good cloud day - there are clouds at all kinds of different heights, which is wonderful.
Now, I've obviously forgotten more than I remember about this book and the contents of it but I wanted to read to you about my favorite clouds. When... When Anna and I recorded the 27th Page One, I called them Autocumulus lenticularis; they are, in fact Altocumulus lenticularis clouds. ‘Altocumulus’ gives you the height of them - they're, kind of, mid-level clouds; although ‘alto’ means ‘high’ in Latin or Italian they are, in fact, mid-level clouds - and ‘cumulus’ is something to do with the shape of them, I think, or the way that they form? [I'm] not entirely sure. They are, apparently “usually composed of droplets, but may also contain ice crystals”. The lenticularis clouds are particularly wonderful because of their shape. They're very, very beautiful. And I think it was when I was in Polverigi on this artists' retreat, I saw some Altocumulus lenticularis clouds. I was very excited. Because they... around there, they have the kind of hills that allow the lenticularis clouds to form.
This is... So this is... I'm going to read you from page 115 and 16 and then from page 119 and 20. It's quite a lot of text but I really think it's worth it.
ON 27 JULY 1907, in the little Norwegian town of Drøbak, twenty miles south of Oslo, someone took a photograph of the pleasant view across the Oslo fjord towards the town of Holmsbu on the opposite bank. The grainy black and white picture shows a couple of jetties in the foreground and some clipper ships anchored in deeper water. It also shows a dark disc hovering in the sky above them. Sixty years after the photograph was taken, it was published in the Italian Sunday supplement, La Domenica del Corriere, where it was held up as one of the earliest UFO photographs. ‘Even today,’ wrote the caption, ‘the phenomenon is a mystery.’
Whilst it may have been an unidentified flying object, this was no flying saucer. It was in fact a particular species of Altocumulus cloud that is known as lenticularis. Although you can't see much from the photo - just a disc-shaped shadow - the clue to it being a cloud comes from the hill behind which it is hovering.
I said that Altocumulus is usually a layer or patch of fairly regularly spaced cloudlets, so it might seem odd to identify such an individual cloud as being part of this genus. It doesn't look very layer-like. The lenticularis does indeed appear quite different from the typical formations of Altocumulus, and has more in common with the lenticularis species of the lower Stratocumulus cloud.
In both cases, lenticularis are ‘orographic clouds’, which means they form when air is forced upwards as it passes over an obstacle such as a hill or mountain. They are fairly common in mountainous regions. Nevertheless, it is such a dramatic cloud that it feels like a special event when you come across one. Who knows if the anonymous turn-of-the-century photographer was a cloudspotter or if he just captured the Altocumulus lenticularis by accident? I like to think that he excitedly set up his tripod and bellows, and rushed to adjust the framing simply to record the cloud. Altocumulus lenticularis is, after all, one of the most dramatic and beautiful species there is.
If it looks more solid than many, that's because, like a young puffy Cumulus cloud, it is composed of a large number of very small droplets. The smaller and more plentiful a cloud's droplets, the more opaque it appears. But the ‘lennie’, as glider pilots tend to call it, has a much smoother, silkier surface than the crisp mounds of the convection clouds.
Lenticularis means lens-shaped. The cloud can look like a very elongated lozenge or sometimes like a stack of pancakes, but the classic shape is of a flying saucer. Any cloudspotter lucky enough to catch sight of one when snowboarding in the Alps might wonder if aliens have parked their spaceship in the lee of the Matterhorn for a mug of Glühwein before the long ride home through the Milky Way. Of course they haven't. They've just come to remind us that the clouds are Nature's poetry, spoken in a whisper in the rarefied air between crest and crag.
I love how Gavin Pretor-Pinney writes about clouds. I really feel his love of clouds. It's very... It's... So, this book, The Cloudspotters Guide, it's informative but it's also quite poetic.
Okay, that was the... that was pages 115 and 16. I'm going to read from page 119 now - just because this has a little bit more of an explanation about the cloud itself and how it is formed.
I DON’T WANT TO devote too much attention to the lenticularis species, as there are many other wonderful types of Altocumulus to consider, but I do want to spend a little longer with it. As an orographic cloud, it does demonstrate one of the main ways that clouds form.
The convection clouds, like Cumulus, form when air rises in thermals from [the] Sun-warmed ground. Layer clouds, like Stratus, often form due to the gentle large-scale ascent of moist air when a region of warmer air is lifted as it comes into contact with a cooler one. But orographic clouds, such as lennies, form when winds encounter an obstacle, like a hill or mountain, and are forced upwards to pass over. Each type of cloud formation involves air rising. When air rises, it expands, causing it to cool. By cooling, the air's molecules slow down and some of the water ones - the water vapour - end up joining together into droplets or even, if it's cold enough, ice crystals.
Suppose some cloudspotters are driving up a mountain for the view. They might feel their ears pop with the drop in pressure. An air stream rising up the side of the mountain will also move into an environment of continually lowering pressure.
When they stop the car to lower the tyre pressures, so that the wheels grip better on the snowy road, the cloudspotters might feel the nozzle of the tyres become colder as the air expands and rushes out. The stream of air flowing up the mountain and dropping in pressure also cools as it expands.
As they stand triumphantly on the mountaintop, the cloudspotters might notice puffs of mist forming in their breath as it cools by mixing with the air around. If the air stream that is riding up the mountain contains enough water vapour and cools enough by its gain in altitude, some of the vapour can also condense into cloud droplets, forming into orographic clouds that the spotter stands admiring.
Whilst this is the general principle of orographic cloud formation, the particular shape of the lenticularis species results when the air stream takes on a wave-like motion in the lee of the summit. It is much the same as the standing wave that can be seen when the current in a fast-moving stream flows over a large rock. The surface of the water can also show a stationary wave shape downstream from the obstacle. Even though the water is rushing through, these crests of wave are stationary.
Exactly the same thing can happen in the airflow behind mountains and hills, and the stationary crests of the air current can be much higher than the mountain itself. Under the right conditions, lens-shaped clouds can form at each of the crests. A keen cloudspotter will see that, unlike most clumps of cloud, the Altocumulus lenticularis remains remarkably stationary even though there is often considerable wind.
The air is actually blowing through the cloud, forming droplets of water at the front of the crest that pass through with the air stream and then evaporate again as the air comes down the back of the crest. Though the droplets are speeding through the cloud, while the air flows at a constant speed, the point at which they form and they evaporate is fixed. Thus the shape of the cloud as a whole doesn't move.
Despite the rush of air passing through them, lennies find their parking place in the lee of mountains and hang there - worried, no doubt, that if they move they'll never find such a good parking space again.
So that... yeah, that's part of my fascination with the Altocumulus lenticularis clouds. I mean, the shape of them is beautiful - and the fact that they are so smooth: they are aesthetically very, very pleasing. But I also love knowing that they are both stationary and in movement at the same time. I think that... I don't know why but I find that really intriguing. It... I just... Yeah. Anyway. So. And there's more wonderful stuff inside that book that I obviously don't have time to... to read to you right now. I'm trying to make this episode a little bit shorter than the previous episode - just for your comfort and safety.
So let's hurry along to the last...
[page turning]
... thing that I'm presenting [laughing] you today. ‘Thing’ is not a very flattering word to use for this. This is a magazine. But that... It's not... So it's not a book, it is a magazine - but it is a very beautifully produced magazine. And, pleasingly for me, it is not laminated. So. Anybody who's listened to the previous Page One will know that I don't particularly enjoy laminated covers. This one is a matt cover. Very attractive. This is OutThere Magazine, International Homoculture, Style, Voices And Travel. The Style Issue, this one is called. So this was published in... Oh goodness does it have a date even? I'm not sure that it does but certainly 2012. This was given to me by Uwern Jong, one of the editors of the magazine, in the 29th Page One, which we also recorded in Hackney at the Wilton Way Cafe.
[The] magazine has lots of wonderful things inside it. I'm... There's a lot of fashion in here and I'm not generally particularly interested in fashion but the photographs are very, very beautiful - the shoots. There's a certain amount about culture, there's a little bit about politics and there's also... there's a short story, there's some travel stuff.
I just wanted to read you a little bit on page 99 of the magazine. The magazine is over 171 pages long. There's... After page 171 there are no more page numbers but there are only two or three pages after that. So on page 99... this is, I suppose, a profile of Rob Roth written by Avenue Q creator Jeff Whitty. It says... So, on the previous page it says:
AVENUE Q CREATOR JEFF WHITTY
ON THE TRANSFORMATION OF
ROB
ROTH [/rɒθ/]...
or Roth [/rəʊθ/]? I don't know…
... ROB
ROTH [/rəʊθ/]
FROM CLUB KID TO PROMOTER,
ART DIRECTOR TO ARTIST,
WRITER TO PERFORMER
Here we go. I don't know who Rob Roth is but I really like this... the opening to this... this profile.
An audience gathers in wait for the oldest living woman in the universe. After some delay she limps down the stairs of the auditorium - half a million years of ambling decrepitude. Her movements are halting, her skin so wrinkled and weathered it seems it could slip from her bones. With her she brings a creature on a leash, a half-man half-wolf who pratfalls onto the floor behind her, finding a home in a large mound of dirt planted near the middle of the stage. Claywoman, as the old crone is known, greets her audience, only to be interrupted by a calamity - the half-man half-wolf falls backwards in a chair, shattering a wine bottle in the process.
‘I'm terribly sorry Craig, I had completely forgotten about you,’ she apologises, then turns to the audience. ‘I rescued Craig from Asteroid G9-014. I think he's holding up rather well.’ She offers him a sip of whisky. ‘I'm just trying to calm him down. You see, the grief he feels is indescribable. Someday you may know it too.’
And then Craig turns, his pale pale blue eyes searching behind a mask of shaggy fur, and sings:Moving forward using all my breath -
Making love to you was never second best.
I saw the world thrashing all around your face,
Never really knowing it was always mesh and lace.The voice seems improbable from the shivering, sensitive creature. It is rich and touched with pain and knowing, suggesting great 80s vocalists like Dave Gahan...
… Gahan [[/gɑːhən/]? I don't know…
... Morrissey and Mark Hollis, but emanating from the most unlikely source - this pained half-man half-wolf.
I'll stop the world and melt with you.
You've seen the difference and it's getting better all the time.
There's nothing you and I won't do -
I'll stop the world and melt with you.
So it's... Apparently it's Rob Roth [/rəʊθ/] - or Roth [/rɒθ/] - who is the wolf-man singing there.
There we go. That's the... That's the end of this, the 7th Page One In Review. Thank you very much for listening to this. I hope you're all keeping safe and well. Yeah. Tune in again for more of this. I've got plenty more books to talk about. Yeah. That's it. I'm just, yeah, talking for the sake of talking now. Thanks. Thanks. Bye.
Jingle
Thank you for listening to Page One. For more information about the podcast, please go to pageonepodcast.com.
[Initial transcription by https://otter.ai]