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Episode image is a detail of a photo by Charles Adrian.
Getting his mind focused and in the right place, Charles Adrian talks about another ghost book and two books based on real life.
In case you are interested, Charles Adrian talked about the hot weather in Page One 178 and about getting up early in the morning in Page One 172.
You can read about The Ridgeway here and about the reintroduction of Red Kites into the Chilterns here.
Books discussed in this episode were previously discussed in Page One 93 and Page One 94.
A transcript of this episode is below.
Episode recorded: 1st September, 2020.
Episode released: 29th September, 2020.
Book listing:
How To Be A Bad Birdwatcher by Simon Barnes (Page One 93)
Yoruba Girl Dancing by Simi Bedford (Page One 94)
The Ivankiad by Vladimir Voinovich (trans. David Lapeza) (Page One 94)
Links:
Episode transcript:
Jingle
You're listening to Page One, the book podcast.
Charles Adrian
Hello and welcome to the 180th Page One. I'm Charles Adrian and this is the 24th Page One In Review. Today is Tuesday the 1st of September. So a pinch and a punch for the first of the month and no returns!
I don't have very much more to say about the situation in the world today. I mean, there's a lot going on. I just don't... I don't particularly want to talk about it. But, yeah, weatherwise it's quite nice today. The sun is shining. It's, kind of... I mean, it's hot, I would say, which it hasn't been - it's been feeling really quite autumnal. We had... We had hot weather and I was standing here sweating - I don't know if you remember - with a towel draped over my shoulder and then storms came - I was talking about the storms that were going to come and they did come. There was storm, storm, storm. There was then a lot of rain, a lot of wind. I can't remember which order those came - we had a whole day of just very strong winds and a day of rain just pouring down. Then it got cold. I mean, really cold. I've put the heating on. I mean, today is the 1st of September so it feels like maybe, you know, it's okay to talk about today as autumn but this was last week! This was, you know, the... or over the weekend, perhaps. Anyway, last few days of August. That's still summer holidays if you're a child in England and Wales.
So. Anyway. The point is, today it's quite nice again and I even slept with the window open last night. So, I mean, maybe... yeah, who knows what the weather's doing? But there's a... yeah, there's a little update for you in case you were wondering how it feels to be me today on Tuesday the 1st of September 2020.
I have three books to talk about today. Hello, by the way. Sorry. Get my mind focused and in the right place. Hello. Welcome to the podcast. For anybody who's new, this is a book podcast and these Page One In Review episodes are episodes in which I am going through all of the books that I've been given by my guests over the last eight years of doing the podcast. Not every episode of the podcast is one in which I talk to a guest but - well, and these aren't, for example, this is just me talking - but a substantial proportion of the episodes that I have made are episodes in which I talk to a guest and my guest has given me a book that they think I should have.
Today, I'm talking about one ghost book, which is a book that I was given and then have given to somebody else - I don't remember who I gave that book to - and two books that were given to me by the same person. Not the same person that gave me the ghost book but a different person, but they gave me two books, if that makes sense. So they gave me... well, I'll tell you when I get to it. [laughs] Just... I was thinking - because I've already told you that what my guests give me is the book they think I should have - I also ask my guests to talk about a book that they like. So they talk about a book that they like and a book that they think I should have. And in this case my guest gave me both of those books.
But before I get to that...
[page turning]
... the [laughing] first book that I want to talk to you about is what I'm calling the ghost book. It's How To Be A Bad Birdwatcher by Simon Barnes. And I must have just given this to somebody who I had a conversation about birds with, I assume. It was a great book. Yeah, I remember I really enjoyed it and was quite surprised by it. My father is very interested in birds and is a... something of an amateur bird-watcher - you know, and has a bird feeder set up in the garden and watches the birds that come and feed there and so on - but I've never thought of myself as a bird-watcher. And I remember when I talked to... Oh, I haven't even told you you gave me that book.
Wow, I can't... Yeah, focus! Focus, Charles Adrian! Mind in the right place. I don't... I don't really... Positive affirmations never really do very much for me but... anyway...
Tom Bowtell gave me this book during the 93rd Page One. We had that conversation at the Royal Festival Hall on the south bank of the Thames in London. I don't remember where inside the Royal Festival Hall we sat to have that conversation but I've a feeling it was more on the down-river side - on the left hand side as you come in from the riverside entrance.
And I... yes, so I seem to remember telling Tom when he... when he started talking about this book - How To Be A Bad Birdwatcher by Simon Barnes - that I wasn't very interested in birds or, at any rate, that I don't know very much about birds and I don't know very many birds and I can't recognise birds. I think he might have challenged me to name some birds off the top of my head and I probably said: “Oh goodness, I don't think I can name any” - or [laughs] certainly I don't think I thought I could name very many - and was quite surprised by how many I could name.
And I continue to be surprised. I've been thinking about this, you know, in preparation for recording this episode. You know, from my flat here in West London I can recognise seagulls flying past, swallows, pigeons, magpies, ducks, crows... I haven't seen them for a while but there was a... a murder of crows - I think that's the word - that I certainly did see earlier in the summer flying from left to right in the evenings as the sun was setting. I assume they flew the other way in the mornings but I'm not up at sunrise generally - except on the very few days that I've talked about in episodes of... in these Page One In Review episodes. [noise of train engine going past outside] And... yeah, so that's... that's already... Wait, I made a list.
So that's already: seagulls, swallows, pigeons, magpies, ducks, crows. That's six types of birds. I think I've seen a hawk once or twice - some kind of hawk. I don't know what it was. I mean, it... it might have been a red kite. I... I know that there are lots of red kites not very far from here out in Buckinghamshire and... and then west of there. In fact, perhaps all across... Anyway, I went on a long walk along the Ridgeway once with some friends and, yeah, one of my friends was [laughing] telling me about red kites. We were very excited about it the first few times we saw a red kite and then by about day four or five of our walk we couldn't care less any more. [laughing] There were so many of them.
Anyway. So. Yes, so I can't actually recognise a red kite but I... I know what they are. Parakeets I can recognise. They are very often parakeets that fly over the house. And you can hear them also. Blackbirds I could recognise and I recognise the... the sound. Blue tits, robins, chickens, turkeys, kingfishers, doves, eagles, ostriches, emus, vultures, swans, coots, moorhens - and I know the difference between a coot and a moorhen and could tell you if you were interested - canaries, parrots, puffins, penguins, pelicans, peacocks, pheasants, storks, herons, flamingos, woodpeckers, owls. So this is a list I made of all of the birds that I think I would be able to recognise if I saw them. So not all of those birds are birds that I see from my house. Certainly, I've never seen an emu or...
I mean, these... a lot of these birds aren't birds that I've seen - well, I say “a lot”... Some of these birds aren't birds that I've seen in real life but they're still... you know, they're... they... they're still birds that I would absolutely recognise if I saw them. Did I mention geese? I don't think I did. Anyway. Yeah. So that's... that's over thirty birds. And, as I say, those are just birds that I think I would recognise. I have many more names of birds lodged in my brain that I probably wouldn't recognise but are there as words.
I mean, you know, what exactly does a kittiwake look like, for example? Or a house martin? Or a buzzard? Or a turkey vulture? Kookaburra? A loon? Actually, I think I might have a vague idea of what a kookaburra looks like. Wrens, rooks, ravens... I can't tell the difference between crows, rooks and ravens so, having said that I've seen crows flying past my house, they might have been rooks or ravens. Larks, thrushes, cranes, cormorants... Oh no, I would know what a cormorant looked like actually. Nightingales, whippoorwills... That's a great word, isn't it: “whippoorwill”. Gannets, mockingbirds, albatrosses, terns, grebes... I would know what a grebe looked like. Well, if it was a great crested grebe I would know what it looked like because I've seen videos of them... flirting. What is it... What's that called? It's not called flirting when it's birds it? They do mating dances, don't they? Really quite extraordinary mating dances and wonderful... And then there are... there are bowerbirds and birds of paradise and probably other... Sparrows! I don't think I've mentioned sparrows and starlings.
There are lots of birds that I know, it turns out. And I think that... not... I don't have a very strong memory of the book How To Be A Bad Birdwatcher but I think Simon Barnes's point is that you don't have to be an expert to be a birdwatcher. You can still get pleasure from sitting wherever you can see the sky or, you know, a body of water - a river or a lake or the sea or whatever - and... or, you know, also... what...? There are some birds that hang out... Flamingos hang out in salt pans, don't they? Salt lakes. Anyway. So you... wherever it is that you can sit and look at where birds are, whatever the level of knowledge you have is, you can still get some pleasure from it. I think that's his point. And if that... if I'm right about that and that is his point, I would agree with that. I think that's right. [laughs]
Certainly that's... I mean, I very much enjoy seeing... not so much the pigeons because I... like... like with the red kites on my walk I'm quite bored of seeing pigeons at this point in my life but I love seeing the parakeets for all that they are noisy and irritating. I love seeing magpies - I think they're glorious birds. I very much enjoyed watching the crows - or the rooks or the ravens or whatever they were - flying left to right past the back of my house. Yeah, I just... yeah. And I... when I was a child, we had chickens at home, which were glorious birds to watch. They are really... They're wonderful! Endless entertainment, watching a chicken. They're really... Yeah, they're really extraordinary creatures. And they lay eggs and I love eggs.
So... yeah. So anyway. That's How To Be A Bad Birdwatcher. I wish I could read you a little bit from it. I don't remember who I gave it to - I don't remember if it was a loan or not - but, in any case, I don't have that book any more.
[page turning]
What I do have are two books from Colin Bartlett, who was my guest on the 94th Page One. So... yeah, so it's Colin who gave [laughing] me both the book that he brought that he liked and the book that he brought that he thought I should have. I think the first one - Yoruba Girl Dancing by Simi Bedford - is a book that he's given to lots and lots of people. I think it's a book that he keeps buying and giving to people if that's... if I've remembered that right. It may be that both of the books, actually, are books that he's given to lots and lots of people.
So Colin and I, we had that conversation also in the Royal Festival Hall on the south bank of the Thames in London and I have a much better memory - a much clearer memory - of where we were sitting. It was more on the up-river side of the [laughing] Royal Festival Hall. So toward the right as you go in through the riverside entrance - or one of the riverside entrances. And what I don't remember because I haven't been there for so long is which colour that is. The... You have the... what are they? Red... Red stairs and blue stairs - or green stairs? I've forgotten now but... Anyway, I don't remember which stairs you'd have to go up but if you go in from the riverside you go up the staircase on the right and on one of those floors you might find the chair on which I sat to talk to Colin Bartlett. It was... It was by a window.
Anyway. Yoruba Girl Dancing. So that's the first book that I want to talk to you about that Collin gave me. It's subtitled: “The poignant story of a childhood in exile”. It is extremely poignant but also very funny and very spirited. I... Yeah, it's... it's a really interesting book. It's described on the back here as a “partly autobiographical novel”.
For me, when I read it, it had a shape that I couldn't... that I didn't quite grasp. It felt like it stopped at a point where I wanted it to continue. Maybe that's the sign of a good... You know, I was obviously [laughing] really engaged with it. But it didn't... yeah, I didn't feel like it got to a point where I was like: “Oh, I'm fully satisfied with this narrative”. I wanted to know much more about this girl's life.
Yeah. What does...? I don't know if she...? Remi. Yes, she gives... So she calls her heroine Remi. She's called Simi. So I... I like that. There's a, kind of... there's a hint in there that this is not entirely fictional. Is anything entirely fictional? Probably not.
But anyway the point is it's about this girl Remi who grows up in Nigeria - or... well, although... I mean, she doesn't have very many years to grow up in Nigeria before she's sent away to boarding school in England because her father thinks she will get a better education there. And her father is, I think, quite wealthy. I think he's a merchant and I've a feeling there's a passage in here where she describes the warehouses at the port where her father keeps all of his goods but I may be misremembering that. In any case, she has a big family and she has a very happy life in Nigeria and doesn't really understand why she's being sent away.
And, of course, what she chronicles is... is the culture shock and the experience of racism - the experience of being treated as something extraordinary and incomprehensible and... yeah, it's... it's... it's difficult to read in parts. It's very upsetting. I... you know, I was at boarding school and boarding school is already a grim place for many, many people and, for somebody who is very far away from her family and surrounded by people who don't get her at all and you... really very isolated, that's... yeah, oof, that's hard. But, as I say, it is also very funny, this book, and spirited. I think spirited is the right word.
This book... So this edition is published by Mandarin. It is 185 pages long. I want to read you a little bit from pages 46, 47 and 48, which is the end of chapter 3. It describes Remi leaving home, essentially. Yeah, she's going to get on a boat and... I mean, when she's on the boat she has some quite amusing adventures and you see... yeah, you see... so, yeah, it's the reason I use the word “spirited”. She's... She's very young and nevertheless quite cheeky. And she knows how to get what she wants when she needs to. But this... So this is the... this is the leaving, starting on page 46:
The day of departure rushed open-armed to meet us; friends and family came by every day bearing gifts to wish me well and console my mother and Grandma. Among them were my two special friends, Ebun and Derin, my fellow bridesmaids at Sisi Bola's wedding. We swore undying friendship. Yowande and I had no need to swear. Yowande said she felt sorry for me, but she also said that she wanted to come too.
Patience was inconsolable. The rag doll she was making me was regularly drenched with her tears as it took shape in her fingers, causing the colours to run.
‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Why dey make am go? Small child like this never go England before, na big man and woman go.’
I waited but Grandma had no answer. The last straw for both of them was when Bigmama insisted that all my hair should be cut off.
‘They will not be able to manage it at the school,’ she told my mother. ‘They will not know what to do with African hair.’
‘These people must be very stupid,’ Grandma said, ‘what is the matter with them? Hair is hair.’
‘I know,’ said Bigmama, ‘but they are not used to it.’
‘I am sure you are right,’ my mother said. ‘Unless it is properly oiled they will not be able to pass a comb through, and it will hurt her terribly. Patience, fetch the scissors please. No, on second thoughts, Remi, come with me.’
Mama took my hand and led me off to her room and Patience followed behind. In half an hour my mother had trimmed my hair into a neat acorn cap which fitted snugly round my head.
‘You look very nice,’ she said when she had finished. Patience held up a mirror for me to see the back.
I didn't think so. I thought it made me look like a baby again and I said so.
‘Not at all,’ Patience said. But I did not believe her.
‘That is much more suitable for school,’ Bigmama said when we went back into the sitting room once more. Grandma said nothing and folded her lips tightly together.
A whole procession accompanied Bigmama and me to the boat the next day. Grandma and Grandpapa, my mother and father, and my brother Tunji, Aunt Rose, Uncle Henry, and Aunt Harriet, and my nurse Patience; I had said goodbye to Yowande at home. The passenger ship Ariel glistened in the sunshine, her sleek steel flanks curved up from the dock seemingly touching the sky, and on the long walk up the gangway, we kept our eyes firmly on the clouds for fear of looking down. Aunt Rose had to be helped every step of the way. Uncle Henry held her hand in front, and Aunt Harriet pushed her from behind. She was a wreck by the time she reached the cabin, and was loudly dreading the return journey down. Grandma, already ensconced in an armchair, told her to stop making a fool of herself.
As soon as the luggage arrived, Patience and my mother busied themselves making our two rooms a home from home. My dolls appeared by magic on my bed, my dresses sprang up like flowers in the wardrobe, and my favourite books lined themselves up, immediately accustomed, on the shelves. As for Tunji and I, we dashed around the ship laughing and shouting; now downstairs trying out the beds which we discovered ruefully had no bounce; now upstairs where my father and grandpapa were checking us in and seeing to the paperwork. Uncle Henry whisked us up on deck, dangled us over the side and scared us, roaring and shrieking, half to death. There were people everywhere, flocks of birds wheeled overhead, and a breeze blew in from the sea. The siren sounded and my father declared it was time for all those not sailing to leave the ship. He swept everyone back up on deck where Bigmama and I were promptly drowned in a monsoon of tears and kisses. Then we were waving, waving, waving. Our faces were still wet long after we had lost them from our sight.
After dinner we took a turn around the deck. It was dark now, the stars were spilled like paint across the sky, and the moon trailed a silver snail track along the sea. We were in the middle of nowhere. Suddenly I began to cry; I yelled so loudly I set the whole ship in an uproar. My step-grandmother was appalled, she tried to quieten me, first with sweets, which I threw overboard, and then with threats. I was beyond solace, it had not occurred to me until this moment that when we set off in the morning I would not be home again in the evening. I was six years old.
That... Yeah, that last sentence I find really shocking. I don't think I knew until I got to that page that Remi was only six years old. It's incredibly young to be sent away. So yeah, Yoruba Girl Dancing. It's a beautiful book by Simi Bedford.
[page turning]
And then... So the other book that Colin gave me is The Ivankiad by Vladimir Voinovich. This is the last book that I have to talk about today. This is a very different sort of a book from a different place. This is... So Vladimir Voinovich is a Russian writer. This is... yeah, this is a satire on life in Soviet Russia and the inefficiency of the bureaucracy of Soviet Russia. So it's called The Ivankiad and it's subtitled “The Tale of the Writer Voinovich's Installation in His New Apartment”. So also a true story, I think. Yeah, I think this is [laughing] also a, kind of, novelised autobiography.
On... In the introduction Vladimir Voinovich writes... Towards the end of the introduction - on page 8 - he writes:
I purposely do not touch on the moral side of these questions. I speak only of expediency. I ask: Why does our super-government so often act against itself without any apparent reason?
Western Sovietologists and even a few of our own thinkers explain everything by dogmatic Marxism. As if some faithful and orthodox dogmatist sits in his office armchair and, holding Marx by the beard with one hand, leafs through Das Kapital with the other, checking his every step against it. Right?
I can't say anything definite about Marx, I've never read him. But in this, my fifth decade of living in this country and looking closely at our life, I seem to have lost sight of this orthodox person. Apparently he died quietly and was buried without honors. But from a rosy mirage there arises before me not a dogmatist, nor an orthodox person, but a figure of a new type. I hasten to present him to you, dear reader.
So I... yeah, the book is then, I guess, an evocation or a description of what it is really like to deal with Russia as it was. I think it's probably a... a fairly accurate representation of what it is like to deal with any kind of system in which rules meet personalities. People cheat and they do things [laughing] that don't make sense and it's perhaps not helpful to imagine that any system is run entirely according to... yeah, rules or dogma. There are always ways round.
And this... So this is just the story of somebody... It's... So I haven't told you how many... So this is a Penguin edition of the book and it's 124 pages long including the appendix and... what was I going to say? Yeah, so it is just, I think... The whole book is about this guy trying to move apartments. So, again, I... as so often, I don't remember very much about all of the things that happen in this book but I do know that he has a... he has a nemesis - somebody else who wants the apartment that he wants. They're all living in a housing complex which is, I think, for writers.
Anyway. So. On pages 42 and 43, I've just... I'm going to read you out... It's a legal brief which Voinovich submits to a committee which is, I think, to decide whether or not he gets the apartment. But it's... it's... you know, it's not even halfway through the book so [laughing] there's plenty more to come. So:
10 March. On the eve of the assembly, the board met once more. For this session I prepared a legal brief which I include in its entirety.
A SHORT COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS
OF THE RIGHTS OF TWO CLAIMANTS
TO AN APARTMENT
(Compiled solely on the basis of law,
disregarding moral factors)
IVANKO
1. With a family of three (including himself) has the right to an apartment of 27 + 20 = 47 square meters. Occupies an apartment of 50.5 square meters. By law, not considered In Need of improvement in living conditions.
2. Wishes to annex to his apartment a room from apartment 66 of 17.5 square meters. 50.5 + 17.5 = 68 square meters. In this matter, the following statute would apply: ‘Upon completion of construction of the cooperative building or buildings, each member of the cooperative shall be granted, in perpetuity, and in accordance with the number of shares and the number of members in his family, a separate apartment not to exceed 60 square meters in area.’ (Housing cooperative bylaws, paragraph 16.)
3. Has been on the waiting list for improvement of living conditions (let us suppose) since October 1972, although it is strange that this was unknown to anyone until now.
VOINOVICH
1. With wife expecting child, has the right to 47 square meters. Occupies a one-room apartment of 24.41 square meters. Is considered Severely in Need of improvement in living conditions.
2. Has been on the waiting list for improvement in living conditions since 1969.
3. The general assembly of 27 January of this year resolved (not recommended, as Turganov maintains) to grant Voinovich the first vacant two-room apartment, which is apartment 66.
SUMMARY
1. In accordance with the decision of the assembly, apartment 66 should be granted to Voinovich.
2. In general, Ivanko has no right to an improvement in living conditions.
[laughing] There you go. That might make it sound quite dry but it is... it is very funny. And also it's... yeah, it's, I think, forever timely. Yeah, it's not enough to have right on your side, you also have to know how to play the game... yeah, unfortunately - or fortunately, I suppose, depending on where you're standing and who it is that you're supporting in whichever fight it is that you're watching.
Okay. [laughing] In any case... yeah, that's it for today. Thank you very much for listening. I shall be back very soon, hopefully, with three more books - substantially bigger each of them than any of the books that I've talked about today and they increase in size. So the f... yeah, the first book is already quite big, the second book is a little bit bigger and the third book is a... is a monster. I'm looking forward to talking about those - particularly the third book, which is one of those that's in my notional top five or top ten... I don't know because I haven't actually worked out but, yeah, top something books that I've been given by guests on the podcast. Yeah, so tune back in then.
Thank you. Thank you and goodbye.
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]