As if by magic... In celebration of 'Mr Benn'

I had so much fun writing about 'Bod' on this blog a while ago, that I thought I'd also re-visit Mr Benn, one of my other childhood heroes.

Mr Benn was created by David McKee and first appeared on television in 1970. Each episode of the series, beautifully narrated by Ray Brooks, sees Mr Benn visiting a little costume shop.

As if by magic, the shopkeeper appeared...

Assisted by a shopkeeper who appears out of nowhere, he chooses an outfit to try on (it always fits), and walks through 'the door which could lead to an adventure'. It invariably does, and that adventure always relates to the costume he has chosen (which is lucky, really: I'm not sure what good a wet-suit and diving gear would have been in befriending an unhappy dragon...).

In re-watching the entire series on DVD - strictly for research purposes, of course - I've realised with a touch of sadness how cynical we can become in today's society. At the opening of the series, Mr Benn has been invited to a fancy dress party, hence his visit to the costume shop. We are told:

'Mr Benn wasn't really very fond of parties, but he did like fancy dress...'

Hmm. An asocial loner, then, with a penchant for dressing up. He also spends time watching the children in his street playing and queueing at the ice cream van. So, through today's eyes, perhaps not the sort of man you'd want hanging around your children...

But of course he is! That's just it. This series sparkles with a touching, innocent magic. One of the delicious things about watching these episodes now is that they remind us about the eyes through which we used to see as children, which is enormously refreshing for the soul.

So. Who is Mr Benn, and what are the features which make this little series so captivating?

Mr Benn lives at 52 Festive Road, a charming (Edwardian?) terrace, where everyone seems to be happy. We know little about Mr Benn's life. He wears a dark suit, smart tie and bowler hat, and has a handkerchief in his breast pocket - even on a Saturday. He looks as though he works in the City. But he never goes to work. Ever.

Festive Road - the Postman brings Mr Benn's invitation to the party.

That doesn't mean he isn't useful to his community, though. Far from it. Mr Benn's adventures generally lead to his helping people, righting wrongs or offering suggestions for ways to make things better. He helps to reconcile the King with his exiled pet dragon; he cheers up a princess who is so lonely that she refuses to eat; and he encourages the townspeople to build bigger cages for the unhappy animals in the zoo.

In short, Mr Benn is gentle, compassionate, practical and diplomatic. He helps to make a difference. 

One of the joys of the series is the beauty of its illustration. Each scene is vividly set in colourful watercolours, whether it be a castle, a jungle, a park or an underwater seascape. And the people are lovely too: they have gentle, rounded features and rosy cheeks.

The animation is executed simply but effectively. When characters are walking or running, we often see them only from the waist up, their legs concealed behind hedges, rocks or jungle scenery, depending on the story. This would have saved the animator a great deal of time and effort - having to produce all those legs moving would be very time-consuming.

The elephants walk through the jungle, legs concealed by foliage.

I'm not sure I felt like this when I was a five-year-old, but now I find there is something unbearably poignant about the moment the shop-keeper reappears, signalling that Mr Benn's latest adventure is over. Without argument, Mr Benn steps through the door which takes him away from his adventure forever, and back to the fitting room. He changes back into his suit and tie. He goes home.

This bit reminds me of a scene in the film 'Field of Dreams', where Dr Graham walks over the threshold of the baseball field to save Ray's daughter, knowing that he can never rejoin his team-mates and continue to live his baseball dream. I find it heart-breaking.

Still, Mr Benn never seems to mind - he is always smiling when he's changed out of his costume and into his own clothes - so perhaps I should stop taking it so seriously and not worry too much.

At the end of each episode, Mr Benn is always left with some small memento of his adventure - a parrot's feather, a seashell, a box of matches with a picture of a dragon on it... and we feel all's right with the world.

'How nice... I'll keep them carefully, just to remind me.'

There is an informative Wikipedia page, which includes a brief synopsis of each episode, and a website devoted to the series - As If By Magic - which has some lovely images. And the DVD contains the whole series, a true nostalgia-fest if ever there was one.

In Mr Benn's own words, to the shopkeeper at the end of an adventure, 'I look forward to seeing you again. Goodbye!'

Mr Benn is copyright 1970 David McKee.

The Seven Links Project

I was really touched this week when 'the fly in the web', proprietor of the lovely Costa Rica Calling blog contacted me to let me know that she had nominated Sophie's Words for the blogging Seven Links Project.

The idea of the project is that one blogger is nominated by another to take part. That blogger then looks back over their archive of posts and chooses one that fits into each of seven categories.

Finally, the blogger nominates five other blogs, although there is absolutely no pressure on anyone - that would be unpleasant, wouldn't it, and if it was going to be like that, I wouldn't have agreed to come out to play!

Now, this blog is still quite young, only a few months old, so I don't actually have that many posts to choose from, but I thought it would be fun to look back on what I've got so far. Here goes...

My Most Beautiful Post

I feel a bit squeamish about this one. While I would hope there is sometimes beauty in what write, I'm not sure it's for me to decide whether there is or not - I think that sort of thing is for other people to judge.

So, I'm going to cheat a bit, and nominate this one:  Seeing the smaller picture because its subject is an object of beauty. I just hope my writing does it justice.

My Most Popular Post

The post which seems to have moved people most, and to have elicited some very personal and heartfelt comments, was How Dave Lee Travis helped make the world complete. I was really touched by the response I got with this one. It seemed to have moved something very deeply in people.

My Most Controversial Post

Ooh, tricky. Perhaps the closest I have got to controversy so far is  Magic moments: Your table awaits which touches briefly on the nature of socialism in Cuba! Believe or not, I was nervous about that one and not sure how much to say. I was relieved once I'd got the politics out of the way and could concentrate on the magic!

My Most Helpful Post

Ah. No doubt about this one. No doubt at all (she said, tongue planted firmly in cheek). This one contained vital information for writers everywhere: Displacement activity, revolving cats... and WWWhen the internet comes good This post also holds the record for longest title. And I had fun writing it.

A Post Whose Success Surprises Me

I'm not sure this counts as success, but the following post caused lots of good-natured banter on Twitter about the interpretation of fairy-tales and their sinister undertones.

Admittedly, the debate wasn't directly related to the blog post, whose purpose was to celebrate the beautiful art work in the old Ladybird books, but it was gratifying to watch it spark something in other people: The Elves, the Shoemaker, and a pile of old... Ladybirds.

A Post Which I Feel Didn't Get the Attention It Deserved

I am of the belief that life doesn't owe me anything. And I don't write the blog expecting anyone to pay attention! But there is a post which is close to my heart, because I so enjoyed writing it, but which seems to have passed by pretty much unnoticed. It did get some very lovely, thoughtful comments when I posted it at RedBubble, though, and seems to have moved people. Here is The Happy Meal.

The Post I'm Most Proud Of

One of the ideas I like to explore on my blog is the similarities which different art forms bear to each other, and how an artist in one field might draw inspiration from another in a completely different field. I'm quietly pleased with Elliott Erwitt - the writer's photographer? because it explores how the visual arts might act as a trigger or an inspiration for a writer looking for character, situation and plot.

So, there we are.

And now for my own five nominated bloggers. As I stressed before, there is no obligation on anyone to take part - we're all busy, and this should be a bit of fun rather than a burden. As much as anything else, I see nominating these five beautiful blogs as a way of sharing them with you. Here they are:

Deborah Parkin Photography  Deborah makes some breath-taking photographs, featured on the blog, but also writes thoughtfully and philosophically. You don't need to be a photographer to appreciate the content here.

Hadriana's Treasures  This is a lovely, varied blog by an ex-city banker and scuba diver, who now runs a B&B near Hadrian's Wall, as well as guiding at local Roman sites, and running Latin courses!

The Way Things Comes Clear  Betsy is a recent history graduate and a keen wet plate photographer. She is obviously a great thinker, too, as will be evident when you read her blog.

In The Write Mind  Quirina's blog is home to her beautiful, hypnotic poetry, which has much to say on the nature of being human. If you read German, you're in for twice the pleasure.

English Epochs 101 Debra is a newly-published author (and therefore very exotic to this aspiring one!). An American, living in Oregon, she has a fascination for British social history, and writes informatively on it, as well as on the nature of writing itself. I would like to take this opportunity of wishing her every success with The Companion of Lady Holmeshire.

Do explore these blogs if you have the chance - each of them sparkles with its own unique riches!

Call me Ishmael... In defence of 'Moby Dick'

I'm quite a slow reader, and life is short. For this reason, long novels often put me off. I find them intimidating, and will more often than not go for a shorter option instead.

But if, given a truly bizarre set of circumstances, I was invited onto 'Desert Island Discs', Herman Melville's Moby Dick (600 pages) would be my book of choice. I would happily while away the hours with it, in my homemade hammock, enjoying some coconut juice and a cooling sea breeze.

Moby Dick is much-maligned: I've more often heard it criticised and described as 'unreadable' than I've heard it praised and celebrated. And the mission of this post is to stick up for this lovely book.

To summarise... Ishmael, our narrator, and his new friend Queequeg, sign on with the whaling ship Pequod, whose captain is the imposing and haunted Ahab. He has one leg missing below the knee, courtesy of a huge white sperm whale - Moby Dick. Ahab's quest for revenge on the whale becomes more and more fevered, until the great climax of the book - a three-day battle of wills between the whale and the crew of the ship.

But Moby Dick is so much more than a book about whaling. My first reaction on reading it, was that it was a sort of 'encyclopaedia of the sea', such is the detail with which it treats it subject. There are chapters dedicated to pen portraits of the crew-members, Nantucket and its inhabitants, the joys of chowder, and a comprehensive classification and description of different types of whale, all in beautiful, engaging detail.

And as with any great novel, all human life is here. The characters are richly portrayed and their relationships with each other are often humorous and touching. My favourite passage has nothing to do with whaling: it speaks of the friendship between Ishmael and Queequeg, who first meet when they are required to share a bed in their temporary lodgings:

... I had felt a strong repugnance to his smoking in the bed the night before, yet see how elastic our stiff prejudices grow when once love comes to bend them. For now I liked nothing better than to have Queequeg smoking by me, even in bed, because he seemed to be full of such serene household joy then. I was alive to the condensed confidential comfortableness of sharing a pipe and a blanket with a real friend. 

Yes, this is a long book. But in its favour, the chapters are very short - many of them just a few pages - making it more manageable. And it really does reward our attention. It is full of humanity and tiny, fascinating details, and makes for really compelling reading.

I do like to include pictures on the blog whenever I can. But I don't have a picture of a whale. So here is another view of John Kindness's 'Big Fish':

 

A big fish! Not as tenuous a link as you might imagine:

Ishmael refers to Moby Dick as a fish, rather than a mammal.  

If I've whetted your appetite and you think you might give the book the benefit of the doubt, I won't spoil the ending for you. I remember standing at a Metro station in Newcastle, half-way through the book, and an elderly lady saw what I was reading. 'I've seen the film,' she said. 'Gregory Peck. He gets him in the end, you know.'

Ah yes, but who gets whom...?

The jewel that is The Crown

It's sad to see that Belfast has been in the news again for all the wrong reasons, after a period of apparent peace and growing prosperity. And I want to help redress the balance. I see this blog as a place to celebrate, and reflect on, the good things in life. And Belfast is one of them.

A while ago, my husband and I took two 3-week photography trips around Northern Ireland, including ten days in Belfast. My husband needed to produce photographs for several books he had been commissioned to illustrate. Every minute of every day was taken up with photography. We found ourselves hoping it would rain, just so that we could have a day off! It didn't. We didn't. For six weeks (although we did once wake up to snow).

As with any city which has enjoyed a resurgence in its fortunes, Belfast is a heady mix of the old and new, alive with history but buzzing with new developments: the beautiful architecture of City Hall sits happily amongst smart new office and housing developments...

The beautiful interior of City Hall, from the dome

 
... the harbour is home to the Harland and Wolff shipyard, where the ill-fated Titanic was built and fitted-out; and the arts are thriving in all their forms. Down by the River Lagan, John Kindness's 'Big Fish' sculpture brings old and new together: created in 1999, it is clad in ceramic tiles decorated with texts and images chronicling the history of Belfast as far back as mediaeval times:

The Big Fish, which also contains a time capsule

But to me, the real jewel in the crown of this fine city is The Crown itself.

The Crown Liquor Saloon is a Grade A Listed building, standing on Great Victoria Street. Dating from 1826, it was extensively refurbished in 1885. In 1978, after a campaign by, amongst others, Sir John Betjeman, the National Trust acquired The Crown and restored it to its full Victorian glory.

And glorious it is too. A real gem. The exterior offers an enticing hint at what awaits you inside, with its elaborate tiles and delicate stained glass (designed to give the customers within a greater degree of privacy):

Stained glass window and elaborate ceramic tiling

And stepping inside really is like stepping back in time.

The Crown owes the beauty of its interior to Italian craftsmen. During the late 1800s, there was a resurgence in Catholic church-building in Northern Ireland, and many Italian craftsmen were employed on these projects. Some of these men were persuaded to work after hours on the refurbishment of The Crown, and their skills and attention to detail can be seen everywhere you look.

The bar is a feast of coloured ceramic tiles, beautifully-carved wood columns with Corinthian capitals, etched glass, decorated mirrors, and mosaics. There is a long 'alter' bar in red granite and a heated foot rail.

 The sumptuous bar: ceramics, mosaics, carved wood...

Customers wishing to have a little privacy can enjoy one of the ten individual booths, or 'snugs', which still have a bell for attracting the attention of the bar staff. Each snug is enclosed with carved wood panels and etched glass, and guarded by carved wooden lions and griffins:

'Fortune favours the brave'

And to add to the atmosphere even further, The Crown is lit by its original gas lamps, which occasionally putter, and which welcome the thirsty visitor with their homely, muggy odour.

Gas lamp, pounded tin ceiling and colourful mosaics

The Crown Liquor Saloon has seen, lived through and survived a lot of history. During 'the Troubles', it frequently suffered collateral damage owing to its proximity to the Europa Hotel, a favourite of visiting dignitaries, which had the dubious honour of being the most bombed hotel in the world.

It is so sad to think that a few people are intent on reversing the peace process in Northern Ireland. I do hope peace will prevail, and I hope that will be soon. Belfast, and indeed the whole of Northern Ireland, is full of gems like The Crown, and they deserve to be discovered, enjoyed and celebrated.

All photography © David Taylor Photography

How Dave Lee Travis helped make the world complete

I was at the 60th birthday party of a dear family friend recently. A terrific party, with lots of lovely people and a wonderfully warm atmosphere. Our friend made a moving speech, in which she mentioned that she was an only child, and that this meant that her friends had always been extremely important to her.

I'm an only child too, and it's a strange, somewhat unnatural state in which to grow up. It inevitably puts you at a bit of a disadvantage when it comes to developing socially. I am fiercely loyal to my friends, but also fiercely independent and self-sufficient. This has meant being largely resistant to the joy other people, outside my close circle of friends, can bring to life.

It has only been in recent years that I've begun to recognise, and embrace, the warmth, pleasure and sunshine which other people have to offer. It may sound odd, but this has been a revelation to me. I think the following traditional African Xhosa proverb expresses it very well:

'Ubuntu ungamntu ngabanye abantu' 

'People are people through other people'

This is something which really struck home this morning when I read an online article about this year's Reith Lectures on BBC Radio 4. The Reith Lectures were founded in 1948 by Sir John Reith, the BBC's first Director-General, with the aim of 'advancing public understanding and debate about significant issues of contemporary interest'.

Two of this year's five lectures will be given by the Burmese pro-democracy leader and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Aung San Suu Kyi. The recording of her two lectures had to be undertaken in great secrecy, with the BBC even referring to her by the code name 'Maggie Philbin', a radio and television presenter, to ensure secrecy was maintained.

In an interview with Eddie Mair ahead of the broadcast of her lectures, Ms Suu Kyi spoke about her years under house arrest. She made special mention of Dave Lee Travis's requests programme - 'A Jolly Good Show' - on the BBC World Service, and spoke of how it had provided a particular lifeline for her. She said it had made her world 'much more complete'.

One thing she said touched me particularly:

'I would listen to that quite happily because the listeners would write in and I had a chance to hear other people's words.'

'... other people's words'. I was stunned when I read that. It made me realise that the one thing we really need in order to exist is other people.

To Ms Suu Kyi, cut off from humanity, this radio programme, with its listeners' requests, created an important sense of contact with the outside world. People's musical tastes, their hopes and dreams, their concerns and priorities, were reflected in the requests they sent in, and this helped satisfy Ms Suu Kyi's yearning for human contact and interaction.

I hope I'm beginning to appreciate how precious other people can be, how crucial they are to living a happy and fulfilled life, and losing my original default position of, well, vague suspicion! There are few things I love more than the smile on the face of a friend - and I'm learning that the smile on the face of a stranger may yet become the smile on the face of a friend.

The Elves, the Shoemaker, and a pile of old... Ladybirds

In times of stress, or tiredness, when I wish simply to be soothed a little, I often find myself drawn to my small collection of Ladybird 'Well-Loved Tales', easy-reading books published from the mid-1960s onwards, on which I cut my reading teeth.

These fairy-tales were re-interpreted for Ladybird by Vera Southgate, and beautifully illustrated by Eric Winter and Robert Lumley. I remember being captivated as a child by the sumptuousness of Cinderella's ball-gowns, the menace of the ogre's face in 'Jack and the Beanstalk' and the handsome, jaunty figure of 'Puss in Boots'.

Sadly, I no longer possess the books I cherished as a youngster. I (rather too) generously handed them down to a younger cousin, assuming, I suppose, that she would care for them as I had. Huh. I think I only need say the words 'coloured' and 'crayons' and you'll be able to imagine the horror for yourself. It still makes me sad to contemplate that mindless destruction!

Happily, though, thanks to the wonders of eBay, I have rebuilt my collection, and have even added stories I never owned as a child. I find when I look through these delightful little books that they hold even more magic for me now than they did when I was a five year old. And much of this magic lies in the way these books were illustrated.

One of my favourites is 'The Elves and the Shoemaker' illustrated by Robert Lumley (this link not only includes the image from the front cover, but a synopsis and several other illustrations - well worth a look).

(This is wholly irrelevant, but compare any of the pictures of the shoemaker with this photograph of Mr Kidd, one of Ernst Stavro Blofeld's henchmen in 'Diamonds Are Forever', and tell me there's not a startling resemblance.)

When I look at this book now, I notice tiny details. For instance, the first illustration shows the shoemaker and his wife at their poor, rough table. The room is shabby. There is plaster missing from a wall and the laths show through (this is a popular motif for poverty which has been used in everything from 'Tom and Jerry' to 'The Simpsons' and 'Futurama', but no less effective for that: if it ain't broke, don't fix it!).

Later on in the book, when the couple have become prosperous, we see them in the same room. But there is now a fire burning in the grate, the furniture is of higher quality, and the couple are better dressed and have acquired a cat. The colour tone of the whole image is much warmer than the one which opened the book.

A little later, when the couple discuss how to reward the elves, there is a beautiful illustration. Crisp winter light floods in through the latticed windows, there is a robin on the windowsill - a promise of Christmas - and I swear I can smell the snow outside, so vividly is this scene illustrated:

And there is nothing more magical than the illustration of the tiny clothes and shoes which the shoemaker and his wife prepare for the threadbare elves, to thank them for their hard work. Note the Christmas decorations - Christmas is always good for a bit of extra magic:

From the late 1970s onwards, the style of illustration changed dramatically, as you can see here. It's all very subjective, of course, but the later style, to me, is more 'cartoon' than the tiny pieces of art which accompanied the stories in the earlier books, and it holds little of the same magic.  

I was lucky enough a while ago to see a handful of the original watercolour drawings for the Well-Loved Tales series, in an exhibition on fairy tales at Tullie House Museum, Carlisle. They were considerably larger than the books in which they were used, their colours glowed, and they exuded nostalgia! I was transported straight back to my childhood wonderment... These truly were artistic masterpieces in their own right.

Drink to me only with thine ayes

Effective communication is a wonderful thing, isn't it? My husband and I consider ourselves lucky, in that we communicate very easily and honestly with each other, something which, sadly, not everyone can accomplish.

You could say we speak the same language. And in a way, we do.

But occasionally, just occasionally, we realise we are speaking completely different languages. And I don’t mean metaphorically. You see, my husband is a Geordie*; I grew up in a village which is a satellite of a town which is a satellite of Birmingham, so I'm very much not a Geordie.

One day I was doing some decorating. I was sanding down a very rough door frame, and my husband told me to be careful I didn’t get a spelk in my finger. I looked at him, baffled. He looked back at me, equally baffled that I obviously didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.

After he’d explained - and we'd agreed that what he really meant was 'splinter' (!) - I thought to myself, that word comes from Old Norse.  That’s why you use it so naturally, husband, and I’ve never heard it. So I went to my dictionary and found this:

spelk n (Scots and northern English) dialect: a splinter of wood (from Old English spelc; related to Old Norse spelkur 'splints')

The Geordie dialect is full of words that have their roots in Old Norse, a legacy of Viking settlement from the 8th century onwards.

I would stress that I'm no expert in etymology (I even had to check how to spell it!), but it is something which interests me. And I thought I'd share a few snippets which I've discovered whilst researching the origin of 'spelk'.

• In common with Scots and many northern English dialects, Geordie commonly uses the word aye meaning 'yes', (from the Old Norse 'ei').

• When a Geordie says 'Aal larn yer', (as Scott Dobson did in his enlightening book 'Larn Yersel' Geordie'), we might assume that the word 'learn' has been incorrectly subsistuted for the word 'teach'. But the truth is much more interesting: a Geordie is drawing on his centuries-old heritage and using the Anglo Saxon 'laeran', meaning 'to teach'. Fascinating, isn't it?

• Newcastle upon Tyne has a massive annual fun fair on its Town Moor, called the Hoppings. 'Hoppings' was the Anglo Saxon word for 'fayre'.

• The Geordie phrase for 'go home' - 'gan hyem' - sounds almost identical to the equivalent Danish and Norwegian phrase: 'gan' was the Anglo Saxon word for 'go'. (In fact, someone once told me he knew of a group of Geordies who had visited a bar in Denmark and been able to converse fairly effectively with a group of Danes, without the need for translation.) 

I find it fascinating that an invasion that happened well over a millennium ago left its mark so indelibly on the local dialect. Better still, it has been gloriously un-superseded by that new kid on the block, Received Pronunciation, a legacy of the later Norman invasion which left the north comparatively untouched.

Before I go, I'll leave you with this: the Vikings also gave us the origin of the words 'smile', 'cake' and 'happy'.

The more I find out about them, the more I like them.


* If you're reading this from outside the UK - I know quite a few people do, and it's lovely to see you! - I should explain that the definition of a 'Geordie' varies considerably. Nobody would dispute, however, that someone born in Newcastle upon Tyne, in north east England, is a true Geordie, and that makes my husband one. Very proud of it he is, too. And quite rightly.