From Somewhere in Time

Sorry if this doesn't read as coherently as usual. I've switched to a different browser and it doesn't mix with my blog format too amiably. The screen is jittering about in a way that feels like bobbing for apples - except that instead of fruits, there are bits of text bobbing madly around all over the place and sliding away when you try to get hold of them.

But anyway, I wanted to write that I went on a radio skills course at Whistledown Productions I've often heard their name at the end of excellent programmes on Radio 4 and so when I got the chance to go on a course it seemed too good a chance to miss.

Speed

As a freelance who is able to set my own hours, I found it most interesting to be working at top speed. In our tightly structured course, were six one-hour slots.

By the end of the day we needed to have done six tasks which were probably easy enough (at least I had managed to do them when I made the Radio 4 Carroll programme) but they were a different story when they had to be done at top speed.

Getting Up Close to SADIE

We were in groups of three people. Our group began by learning to use the SADIE editing system to assemble the components of a programme. All the sections had already been prepared, and we had to overlay the sound effects, add the music and splice it all together. Probably would have been easier for a group of 10 year olds than a group of ageing writers like us.

Fifteen Minutes at the Market

Next, we had to put together a short - 4 minute - piece for a radio magazine programme about the local market. Off to the local market hall, listening to a briefing and instructions, then taking just fifteen minues to find people to interview, interviewing them, doing an intro and conclusion and getting some sound effects.

I did this all right but was struck with admiration for one of our group members who actually managed to give her piece a theme - the multi national character of the market - in that fifteen minutes. Her piece sounded like a proper bit of radio.

Never Say You Don't Know

Then the experience of being interviewed. We had one friendly and one hostile interviewer. Before we went into the studio, we made a list of points we wished to make during the interview. We got some useful advice, familiar to all those who have ever listened to politicians being interviewed. Never say you don't know something, don't get involved in speculation: you must, if some horrendous question is sprung on you, learn to evade the question.

Riots in Budapest
One of our group, Adrian, was interviewed about Budapest, on which he had just written a guidebook. The hostile interviewer gradually introduced more and more spurious terror reports that were supposedly coming in about Budapest. Adrian handled it very well: "I can't comment because I don't know the facts" he said in various ways, during seven attempts to break him down. Finally the interviewer yelled "The Foreign Office have said nobody should travel to Budapest unless it is strictly necessary!" To which Adrian smilingly replied that he would always urge anyone to follow safety advice but he still couldn't comment.

Carroll and Michael Jackson
I opted to be interviewed about Carroll. My hostile interviewer insisted on dwelling on the death of Michael Jackson and inviting me to make parallels between Carroll and Jackson. I hadn't been able to prepare for it- yuo never can prepare for people firing deliberately difficult questions at you - but I ended up feeling that I had dealt with it well and my interviewer thought so too.

I'll be getting the CD of my efforts shortly, so I'll listen to it and try and figure out how I did it. But realising I'd been okay quite set me up for the tasks of the afternoon - a stint doing live interviewing, a programme pitching session and the task of assembling our efforts in the market hall into a coherent item.

Podcast
I'm now thinking of doing a podcast here. But I must confess that John Humphries still has nothing to fear from me.

When Alice played croquet with flamingoes for mallets and hedgehogs for balls, it did not strike me (as she might have said) as so very out-of-the-way. Since I had no idea what went on in croquet the whole thing was just as inexplicable as everything else in the book. Luckily children are used to not understanding things.

I expect they still don't understand but perhaps those living near Brighton will enjoy the Alice in Wonderland Croquet in Preston Manor each day between 1st and 30th August. You can get two hour slots between 10 and 5 each day by calling 03000 290902. I presume they don't have live flamingoes.

All I need is the White Queen dragging me by the arm - perhaps her ghost is doing so, come to think of it - but anyway I definitely feel in need of a dry biscuit to refresh me at the moment!

I came home from one trip (admittedly that one was holiday) only to find that I was supposed to look at the first edit of the whole book before mid July. However I have another trip coming up almost immediately (work) and 2 article deadlines and a lot of other stuff. Moan groan. And technical problems on the blog. So in a nutshell that is why it's been a bit quiet around here lately.

But tech problems are fixed and so I can say, do check out Alice's day on 4th July in Oxford. There are details on www.storymuseum.org.uk/alice There are all kinds of fascinating things going on there folks.

Right, I'm off for a run.

Here's a link to how Patti in California set up a Mad Hatter's Tea Party.

How cool is that!

I am delighted to finally have a picture of The Lady of the Lilacs, by Arthur Hughes. This was one of Carroll's favourite pictures and his nephew remembers the pleasure with which Carroll showed it to him, pointing out the beautiful tints of colour in the hair and elsewhere.

The background to the painting is that Carroll's friend, the writer George MacDonald, had shown Carroll some drawings by Hughes, and Carroll had liked them very much. It may be that one of the drawings was of the Lady of the Lilacs because apparently MacDonald mentioned the matter to Hughes, and it seems from what Carroll said in his diary that Hughes painted it specially for him.

I think Carroll may have also been inspired by this image in at least one of the original pictures he drew for the manuscript of "Alice's Adventures Under Ground" - here's a link to the BL's Turn the Pages: check out page 36.

The picture was sent to me by Toronto-based Karen Bennet, a science fiction expert who loves that fun and fascinating city, and who is also interested in Carroll. (Science fiction fans will find Karen's site well worth checking out so take a look here)

And why Toronto? Well, that is where the picture is - in the Art Gallery of Ontario. In the bank account there is a note about it, showing that on 27 October 1863 he paid Arthur Hughes £26.5s.0d in Victorian money. So the painting was quite pricey.

I think that the Lady of the Lilacs may be a Catholic saint. Carroll wasn't a Catholic but he would have liked the combination of spirituality and beauty. I also think that her formal gestures - the way her hand is raised as if in blessing, and the particular way she is holding her skirt - may have some significance. I wish I knew more about it.

Ambient experimental musician Matt Chopin has been creating music based on the Alice books - interesting stuff. Matt was raised next to a cemetery and started off with classical music, went on to power metal and gothic. This piece is called Red Queen.


Here's a picture of what it reminds me of.



I took the photo in what I think are creepy gardens at Ickworth House, Suffolk. It's a white-ish queen rather than a red one, I suppose, but still a bit frightening - and not photoshopped

Having sold the book to a US publisher there's now the nightmare of the IRS - the US tax system - to negotiate before I can get paid. It's the sort of situation that normally sends me screaming under the bedclothes, but my agent Andrew Lownie, told me about an article on his website that covers this very subject. Thank the good Lord, and thank the wonderful Neil McKenna for writing it.

One of the interesting things about writing the biography was in decoding information which the Victorians would have known but modern people probably don't.

I was looking at some information about Pegwell Bay in Kent, which features in Dyce's famous 1858 painting.



The people are collecting fossils, and the painting is often said to be a comment upon evolution. The idea that the world had NOT been created in 7 days, as stated in the Bible, was a great shock to many, but scientific evidence was marching on and the study of fossils was one of the ways in which people were coming to terms with the whole idea that the world had evolved.

What had escaped me is that Pegwell Bay was the site of the landing of St. Augustine in the 6th century, and he was generally thought to have brought Christianity to England.

So Dyce's picture was taking in both themes. The beginning and perhaps the beginning of the end of traditional Christian belief in the country.

Carroll probably saw the picture. I don't know what he made of it, nor what he might have made of the remains of the cross-channel Hoverport which is now also in Pegwell Bay.

I've just finished a short extra chapter we decided was needed. It's a summing up. Well, the more you know about a person, the harder it gets to sum them up. But I ended up thinking that on the whole I had liked Carroll and would have wanted to know him.

One of the questions I'm most often asked about him, is whether I think he was a paedophile, or at least a closet paedophile. I do not think he was, even though some aspects of his life seem pretty strange to a modern person.

But he wasn't a modern person. He lived in a very, very different time from our own. In his own society, his love of little girls was seen by everyone (and by him) as a love of God's handiwork in a perfect and sinless form. The little girls also offered him support and the kind of childish love that he needed to feel okay.

If he had been raised in 21st century London or New York, every aspect of his life, not just this aspect of it, would have been different. For a start, he probably wouldn't have had the ten highly religious brothers and sisters who had such a profound influence on his life. He would not have lived in a society where women were confined by their husbands and brothers and not allowed to mix with men. He would have had the chance to read up about psychology - he was very interested in medical aspects of mind but lived too early for Freud. The institution of marriage would have been different. Attitudes towards nude photography would have been different. EVERYTHING would have been different.

Stuck in the 19th century, Carroll had things to deal with which modern people would consider extraordinarily cruel, for Victorian life could be just as emotionally stressful and damaging as modern life, but in a completely different way.

His contacts with children - some boys, but mostly girls - helped Lewis Carroll cope with some of the stressful aspects of his own life. They made him feel close to God and provided an escape back into his own happy childhood where he was the beloved entertainer of his three brothers and seven sisters. He thought they SEPARATED him from sin, and he was grateful for and felt privileged to have their company.

The girls who knew him as a friend spoke of how kind and protective he was, what fun to be with, and how much he treated them as people and respected them. The latter two things were rare indeed in the days when children were meant to be only "seen but not heard" and even grown up women were considered incompetent non-persons not fit to handle their own money.

To treat even a small child as if their feelings or opinions mattered was very unusual. To consider that a girl's thoughts were intelligent and worth hearing, was a unique experience to many. They remembered it with gratitude all their lives.

I've just been directed by my good friend Marjorie to Susan Sanford's great site. Susan has an ongoing project of illustrating Alice with cut outs of Tenniel's illustrations against everyday backgrounds.

I think this sums up the feeling of the books really well. I don't know why. I always liked books which combined magic and everyday life.

Susan thinks that the Caterpillar looks like Mr. Punch. At first, I didn't think so. Now, I wonder.