An interim review on the subject of DOGS and PONIES, creatures absolutely vital to any polar expedition in 1910. (They called them ponies, they were aAn interim review on the subject of DOGS and PONIES, creatures absolutely vital to any polar expedition in 1910. (They called them ponies, they were actually small Manchurian horses.) This is what happened to working animals, sometimes.
The voyage from England to Antarctica via South Africa and New Zealand lasted five weeks. They took 19 ponies and 33 dogs.
The ponies and the dogs were the first consideration. Even in quite ordinary weather the dogs had a wretched time.
They are chained up in various places on the top deck where they get lashed by every wave which breaks over the ship…
The dogs sit with their tails to this invading water, their coats wet and dripping. It is a pathetic attitude deeply significant of cold and misery; occasionally some poor beast emits a long pathetic whine.
As for the ponies
Under the forecastle fifteen ponies side by side, heads together, swaying, swaying continually to the plunging, irregular motion… a row of heads with sad, patient eyes… it seems a terrible ordeal for these poor beasts to stand this day after day for weeks together
Then during a fierce storm
The unfortunate ponies – though under cover – were so jerked about that they could not keep their feet in the stalls… the morning saw the death of one. The dogs, made fast on deck, were washed to and fro, chained by the neck, and often submerged for a considerable time…
Occasionally a heavy sea would bear one of them away, and he was only saved by his chain. Meares with some helpers had constantly to be rescuing these wretched creatures from hanging… one was washed away with such force that his chain broke and he disappeared overboard; the next wave washed him back on board again … if Dante had seen our ship as she was at her worst, I fancy he would have got a good idea for another Circle of Hell
When finally they land on the continent of Antarctica
The ponies were the real problem. It was to be expected that they would be helpless and exhausted after their long and trying voyage. Not a bit of it! They were soon rolling about, biting one another, kicking one another, and anyone else, with the best will in the world. After two days’ rest on shore, twelve of them were thought fit to do one journey, on which they pulled loads from 700 to 1000 pounds with ease.
On their inland trek towards the South Pole each pony has a specific carer, and Scott teaches his men to build a sheltering wall at night for each pony. The men seem to really love these beasts. They all have names, like Uncle Bill or Weary Willie, and they take a pride and joy in looking after them.
Every night on camping each pony leader built a wall behind his pony while his pemmican was cooking, and came out after supper to finish this wall before he turned in to his sleeping-bag – no small thing when you consider the warmth of your hours of rest depends largely upon your getting into your bag immediately after you have eaten your hoosh and cocoa. And not seldom you might hear a voice in your dreams : “Bill! Nobby’s kicked his wall down”; and out Bill would go to build it up again.
So how jarring – how bewildering, almost incomprehensible – is it then for a modern reader to read the very next sentence :
Oates wished to take certain of the ponies as far south as possible and then to kill them and leave the meat there as a depot of dog food for the Polar Journey.
The severe practicalities of survival in an extreme environment allowed sentimental attachment to be able to be jettisoned as soon as required. I think the whole tale of these dogs and ponies on this terrible journey leaves a modern reader fairly shaken....more
Mash-up : The Rough Guide to the Middle East with Brideshead Revisited, the whole thing written up by that saucy boy Anthony Blanche. I did immoderateMash-up : The Rough Guide to the Middle East with Brideshead Revisited, the whole thing written up by that saucy boy Anthony Blanche. I did immoderately love flamboyant young Anthony up to no good in the louche bars of Oxford but when he morphs into Robert Byron and swans around sneering at Johnny Foreigner then it does get a bit too too :
I went to swim at the YMCA opposite the hotel. This necessitated paying two shillings [and] changing among a lot of hairy dwarves who smelt of garlic.
This is Anthony to the very letter!
At the turnstile, that final outrage, a palsied dotard took ten minutes to write out each ticket. After which we escaped from these trivialities into the glory of Antiquity.
On Baghdad:
When the temperature drops below 110 the residents complain of the chill and get out their furs. For only one thing is it now justly famous : a kind of boil which takes nine months to heal, and leaves a scar.
Paul Fussell, a heavyweight if ever there was one, wrote in 1982 that The Road to Oxiana is to the travel book what "Ulysses is to the novel between the wars, and what The Waste Land is to poetry." And Bruce Chatwin wanted to get his copy surgically implanted into a cavity in his sacroiliac so he would never be parted.
It kind of depends on whether you throb with love-gushes as you read such passages as
While the cadent sun throws lurid copper streaks across the sand-blown sky, all the birds in Persia have gathered for a last chorus. Slowly, the darkness brings silence, and they settle themselves to sleep with diminishing flutterings, as of a child arranging its bedclothes. And then another note begins, a hot metallic blue note, timidly at first, gaining courage, throbbing without cease, until, as if the second violins had crept into action, it becomes two notes, now this, now that, and is answered from the other side of the pool by a third. Mahun is famous for its nightingales. But for my part I celebrate the frogs.
or
I have never encountered splendour of this kind before. Other interiors came into my mind as I stood there, to compare it with: Versailles, or the porcelain rooms at Schönbrunn, or the Doge's Palace, or St Peter's. All are rich; but none so rich. Their richness is three-dimensional; it is attended by all the effort of shadow: In the Mosque of Sheikh Lutfullah, it is a richness of light and surface, of pattern and colour only. The architectural form is unimportant. It is not smothered, as in rococo; it is simply the instrument of a spectacle, as earth is the instrument of a garden. And then I suddenly thought of that unfortunate species, modern interior decorators, who imagine they can make a restaurant, or a cinema, or a plutocrat's drawing-room look rich if given money enough for gold leaf and looking-glass. They little know what amateurs they are. Nor, alas, do their clients.
Me, I’m such a pleb I kind of go yeah, yeah yeah in that irritating know-it-all tone you know so well by now. I discovered I was utterly uninterested in what Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan looked like in 1932. I realised I had wandered into the wrong book by mistake. We all do that sometimes. Oops, sorry! (Close door hurriedly, face flushing madly.) The trick is to get out as quickly as possible whilst maintaining a shred of dignity. It wasn’t too hard, since I found that this book consists of sneery remarks describing how Robert gets from A to B, and what frightful but sort of delicious indignities he has to put up with; plus a lot of pure-gold comedy vignettes where he recounts conversations with amusing foreign dignitaries or station porters. It's all not a little self-congratulatory, which may be my problem with the whole genre of travel writing.
Here is an example of Robert at his most Byronesque from p 96. RB is on a bus to Meshed and a brouhaha erupts when the driver tries to collect fares. The guy sitting next to RB is involved, gets thrown off the bus but then is allowed back on.
The Pharisee sought his old place in front, by me. But now it was my turn to go mad. I would not have him near me, I said. In reply, he seized my hand, and pressing it to his prickly, saliva-trickling beard, sprayed it with kisses. A shove sent him sprawling, while I leapt out on the other side, declaring to the now befogged, exhausted and unhappy driver that rather than suffer further contact with the man, I would walk into Meshed on my own feet and keep what I owed him in my pocket.
I had decided to skip all the purply prose rhapsodies about architecture and just read the lofty insults but eventually these paled as pale as the moonlight above Turkmenistan. I parted from Mr Byron on rather frosty terms between Teheran and Kum. It was a Thursday and a donkey was chewing my ear off. ...more
I read this years ago and I need to get back into this filthy uncomfortable rowdy dowdy how did people cope for even a single day world of the 18th ceI read this years ago and I need to get back into this filthy uncomfortable rowdy dowdy how did people cope for even a single day world of the 18th century, because it's so much fun.
Johnson was famous, he'd written (singlehandedly almost) the first proper dictionary of English, he'd edited Shakespeare, and he was notorious also also for his serio-comic chauvinist-English detestation of Scotland, so naturally, Scotsman Boswell, the all time Johnson groupie, wished to persuade SJ to partake of the delights of Scotland and to demonstrate how lovely and refined it really was.
So that was a major fail, but in the end, what we got out of the slightly bonkers enterprise was two excellent books, this one, and Johnson's own account, which is much more high falutin and pompous, yes, but also great stuff. Bozzy's own version is hilarious, stuffed full of verbatim 18th century conversations and rampant snobbery, uneatable meals and miles of horrible unpaved roads.
Being a bit obsessive about these things, I was more than a little shocked that I had forgotten to list this wonderful book here, so I make amends now. Welcome to Scotland, 1773. You'll think you're there, and you'll be glad you aren't....more
Just seen the news about Sony's movie The Interview and now I'm thinking - Uh oh - I hope this review doesn't get hacked and bring Goodreads down withJust seen the news about Sony's movie The Interview and now I'm thinking - Uh oh - I hope this review doesn't get hacked and bring Goodreads down with it! Because really, all I am trying to do is to lower the international temperature and turn those tears to smiles as we present a short musical selection we like to call
MY BRILLIANT KOREA
President Obama (dressed as a Mother Superior) :
Have you met my good friend North Korea, The craziest nation on earth? You'll know it the minute you see it, You'll collapse into inappropriate mirth
Mrs Kim Jong-un (looking up from reading the New York Times):
The Jong-uns, darling we're the Jong-uns And Jong-uns shouldn't be afraid to build - socialism - while the flame is strong Cause we may not be the Jong-uns very long
Kim Jong-un:
Climb ev'ry mountain, ford ev'ry stream Follow ev'ry rainbow 'till you build a socialist utopia A socialist utopia that will need all the love you can give Everyday of your life for as long as you live
Prez Obama:
How do you solve a problem like North Korea? How do you drag the Kims before the courts For infecting all the people with such fear They try to make their brains stop thinking thoughts?
Kim Jong-un:
Pyongyang is pretty, oh, so pretty, It's so pretty and witty and bright! And I pity any supreme leader who isn't me tonight. See the great leader on that billboard there
(Cute party cadres : What billboard where?)
Who can that attractive man be? Such a noble face, such a well-cut suit, Such a handsome smile, such a pretty me! I feel stunning and entrancing, Feel like running and dancing for joy, For I'm loved by a pretty wonderful socialist nation!
*
(oh - what? what's that? you want a book review too? well... I suppose so...)
This is a slightly mean-spirited book which recounts all the tedium of a couple of months in Pyongyang as a Western visitor. There's nothing much to do except visit massive monuments to Kim Il-Sung as it was in 2005 when GD went there. Or you could visit massive monuments which are in the process of being built. Or you could mutter about being told to keep your acid jazz music down because it might not be appropriate for other people to hear. Hmph! All the minor indignities any Westerner would zero in on. Guy does a lot of huffing and puffing and tutting, and thereby reveals his own appalling pettiness just as he exposes the gruesome mindsets of the North Koreans. Since we already know that Westerners are a pain in the arse when they visit foreign countries and North Koreans are all poor and oppressed and benighted, you really don't get to learn much you didn't already know.
Here's a mean-spirited book by an English journalist who presents for our entertainment America as Freak Show. Roll up, roll up, for only a few dollarHere's a mean-spirited book by an English journalist who presents for our entertainment America as Freak Show. Roll up, roll up, for only a few dollars see... the Modern Primitives! Women who bind their feet in order to wear 7 inch heels! Yes! Peer inside the mysterious Elohim City, created by crazed Christian cultists armed to the teeth! Visit Murray, Kentucky, home of a terrifying gang of teenage vampires! And so on. Jeffreys writes with a horrible air of superiority about nearly all of his freaks. "Like many elderly southern gentlemen of his type, there's probably not a single human pleasure he rates as innocent, except maybe wearing sheets and burning crosses" (page 130). For Jeffreys, all the cliches are true. He sets up the easiest of targets in order to have great fun in kicking them around. I open the book at random (page 83) : "'The Lord is with us tonight,' Wayne says in a southern accent which bears about as much resemblance to Standard English as rural Hundustani." This book is inviting us to laugh heartily at the trailer park zoo on display. We should congratulate ourselves on how much more intelligent and attractive we are than these creeps and weirdos, says Jeffreys, and reading this book I imagine he does, frequently. Returning from another expedition to California or Alabama I can imagine him chortling about the latest great story he's bagged (maybe a bunch of goofballs who think they've been raped by aliens), one hand on his laptop and the other on his coke spoon. Oops ! I just lapsed into Jeffreystyle for a moment there - for example (page 135) "despite her husband's denials she hired a private investigator, one of those bottom-feeders who usually have one hand on a whiskey bottle and the other rooting around in someone's trashcan". I did enjoy two chapters - one in which a psychologist has a very funny rant against Christmas ("Haven't you felt enraged by someone to the extent that you bought them a present?") and an account of the Burning Man Festival - here, just for a moment, Jeffreys seems to actually like the people he's with. But that's rare. Mostly I get the impression that after another encounter with a wacko from Waco he can't get back to the hotel fast enough. As an Englishman myself, I almost feel I have to apologise to Americans for this book. ...more
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