Two Degrees West by Nicholas Crane

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JB Priestley, moorland, Nicholas Crane, Ready Steady Cook, Time Team, Tony Robinson

Travelling Companions: A Series looking at British Travel Writing

Episode 8

I read this when it was first released in paperback back in 1999. And I enjoyed it very much. The writer was new to me and quickly impressed me with his drive, his enthusiasm and his wide-ranging knowledge. I liked a challenge and it didn’t much matter to me how contrived that challenge was.

At about the same time I had become a fan of the BBC television series ‘Ready Steady Cook’ where chefs were given a bag of ingredients and 20 minutes to knock it into something tasty. Th first series was impressive, the second even more so. Chefs had twigged that the (£5 limit) shopping bags, provided by members of the public, invariably contained one or more of; a bag of rice, an onion, a pack of minced beef, some chicken breasts.  For a couple of years we admired the end dishes and then realised that it was all a bit pointless. Why £5? Why 20 minutes?

On another channel Tony Robinson played the gormless idiot to a group of archeologists. We got a fascinating insight into how these people uncover the past. But again there was a contrivance that eventually palled with the public. These were serious academics uncovering a site of special interest and yet they were given a mere 3 days to do it. Why? Instead of careful work with a trowel and a small paintbrush, a large mechanical digger would rip open trenches. Robinson would dash across to report the discovery of a wall, or a fragment of pottery, and announce it in tones reminiscent of Kenneth Wolstenholme celebrating a goal in the world cup. The artificial nature of both programmes made them unlikely successes but eventually made watching them a dry and tedious affair. Viewers realised that the drama was contrived and they were being manipulated.Re-reading Two Degrees West was like watching a re-run of either of the programmes. He had set himself the task of walking a line on a map and I couldn’t help asking, Why? To what purpose?

A good travel book relies on three ingredients: the journey, the things we see and meet along the way, and the traveller. The journey has to serve a larger purpose than merely getting from A to B and enduring hardships (real or contrived). Leigh Fermor, Theroux and JB Priestley chose routes that told us an awful lot about the lands they travelled through and revealed important insights into human behaviour.. They were wiser men than Nicholas Crane, more widely read in terms of literature and understanding. A Jarrow terraced house in Priestley’s hands becomes an indictment of economic policy, a Welsh boarding house allows Theroux to expose the quiet rotting despair of the small business woman in Margaret Thatcher’s Britain. Their journeys are planned to encapsulate a greater whole. Crane’s choice is to make a journey no-one else has ever done before. The whole book is ultimately about him, and the 17 hours it takes to read, is a long time to spend in his company.First things first. It is an impressive walk. If someone from down your street had done it then I think you’d be fully justified in popping a tenner in their charity collection tin.

The device chooses the route and the route isn’t propitious. The first half of the journey is over moorland. It’s inspiring countryside. I know it well.  Unfortunately there is only so much to say about walking over moorland. It has a habit of repeating itself. In the wrong hands fifty miles of heather and bog is one mile fifty times over. All travel writers rely on anecdote and chance meetings. Many of the meetings in this book are pre-arranged and Crane isn’t a natural storyteller. Neither is he a particularly perceptive observer, he lacks a good ear for dialogue and seems uncomfortable around anyone who isn’t from a public school background. On the positive side, he’s enthusiastic, loves numbers, and trains and is happiest when giving a great deal of information about locomotives or triangulation points. In short he is something of a nerd. The problem with a wide readership is that you either have to take your readers into the specialism and make them work, as Stephen Hawking did with A Brief History of Time or you water down your thesis. Crane goes for mass appeal (no doubt encouraged by the people at Penguin). Lacking true substance, it uses the exact same ingredients as Ready Steady Cook and Time Team. Manipulated tension and  bonding to a central contrivance. We are asked accept that walking the 2nd meridian is important and difficult. In reality it is neither. He anticipates great problems and shares them. How can a man with a rucksack get across a large reservoir? How will he cross a motorway?  The danger is fake and the outcome is almost bathos. He has pre-arranged with a boat club member to sail him across the Derwent Reservoir and there is a large farm tunnel under the M62. In terms of a recreational walk it is a tough old wander but in terms of serious geographical and physical challenge it is small potatoes.

He could do what many writers before him have done and make light of the journey and concentrate on the views of England that he passes through. He doesn’t. He continues to emphasise the rigours he has to endure which involve him sleeping outside without a tent (millions of British people are hikers and many of them have bivouacked regularly in comparable conditions), getting wet, getting a bit tired and being turned away from bed and breakfasts on the grounds that they are full.When he can’t find anything to write about we get little guide-book histories that  romanticise the past. Smugglers are loveable rogues who rob from the rich, grouse moors preserve species and ancient ways of life and people learn to know their place. He makes occasional reference to other writers all from the distant past (Byng, Leland, Cobbett, Fiennes). We get snippets of what they had to say but little is revealed. It feels like someone with a reading list claiming to be well-read.We don’t learn very much about the history and geography of England  and it certainly doesn’t capture a snapshot of the summer of 1997. The death of Diana gets a few mentions, he visits Longbridge and sees a production line at the, soon to be bought, robbed and shut down, Rover car plant. He gets a lot of help from his over-bearing father, various friends, including the runner Christopher Brasher (who gets introduced and largely ignored in the text), and especially the military.Crane went on to find a certain celebrity as one of the presenters of “Coast”, a series which made a slow journey around the British Isles revealing what was there. It was more thinned down specialist stuff for the wider market with each episode divided between several presenters. Enjoyable, attractive television that we watch and then forget. It owed as much to television planners as it did to academics. It has gone the way of Ready Steady Cook and Time Team. Remembered fondly until you come to watch it again. Two Degrees West is not a bad book if you like a little well-mannered escapism. If you want well told anecdotes and incisive historical document it probably isn’t for you. If, however, your need is for detailed information on the dates, costs, materials, and method of building  the network of the little concrete towers called triangulation points, then this is the book you’ve been waiting for.

The Uke of Wallington by Mark Wallington : 2012

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Mark Wallington, open mic, the use of wallington, ukulele

British Travel Books : Number 8

Travelling around the United Kingdom is a recurring theme in Mark Wallington’s books. Some of them are out and out travel books; Five Hundred Mile Walkies deals with the South West peninsular coastal path, Boogie up the River follows the Thames from London to its source in the Gloucestershire Cotswolds, Pennine Walkies takes in the Pennine Way (all featuring an amiable and disreputable dog companion), Destination Lapland (a bicycle tour that never gets to Lapland; never leaves these islands in fact) all follow the formula: first person narration of a journey with lots of information, anecdote and companionable presence of the storyteller. The one novel of his that I have read – The Missing Postman – is plotted around delivering random letters in a postman’s sack. In other words it is essentially a tour of Britain. I’ve bought and read all of the above so Mark Wallington has done very nicely out of me. On the whole though, I think I’ve had rather the better of the deal. He’s gained a few pounds (sterling). I’ve gained many hours of pleasure and plenty of chuckles and belly laughs. If you’re reading this Mark. Thank you very much indeed.My friend Jon thinks this is the best of the bunch. I’m not so sure. But then Jon is teaching his wife how to play the ukulele and this may be the key. The dear old ukulele is going through a late flowering in Britain. Seen by young music teachers as an alternative to the descant recorder in the ‘get everyone playing a musical instrument’ stakes, seen by older people as a late opportunity to pick up the musical instrument they always promised themselves they’d one day learn. And one that you can sing along to within an hour yet which has infinite possibilities in terms of progression. (Check out Youtube for many examples of virtuoso uke playing). At one time George Formby and Tessy O’Shea seemed to be the alpha and the omega, then George Harrison declared himself a devotee (he went to Joe Brown for advice and lessons*) and the popularity slowly (very slowly) spread. In the last ten years it has gone crazy. Everybody seems to own a ukulele (I have two!) and everybody seems to have discovered that they sound great accompanying rock’n’roll songs.The book is first rate on the appeal of this much maligned instrument (Hawaii’s contribution to musical heritage). Wallington is a little older than me (63), has lived his life through the rock and roll years, has had several careers, has decided that lack of ability means his dreams of reaching musical stardom by the conventional means of joining a five piece band with guitars, bass, drums and a piano player have come to nothing. So he’s bought a uke and is now setting out on an unofficial tour of Britain, travelling from Brighton to Cape Wrath playing his ukulele in every Open-Mic he can find.

N.B. An ‘Open Mic’ is a semi-formal singing session, usually in a pub where people get up and sing a couple of songs to a (usually) apathetic audience under the guidance of a host (who often hogs the microphone and plays most of the songs himself (it’s invariably a he)). Actually these are hit and miss affairs. Many are a little bit dreary, a little bit, well, er, dead. But if you get a good one it is buzzing. A succession of high quality musicians supporting each other and simply enjoying having a public sing. A free concert. A bloody good night out. Wallington experiences both ends of the spectrum. Both ends of the plectrum perhaps!

“A concert?!” said my wife.

“Why not?”

She didn’t want to tell me the truth. “In front of people you don’t know?”

“My plan is to improve as I go along.”

“You don’t think this is a young man’s activity?”

“Bob Dylan is 70.”

“Bob Dylan started playing when he was a teenager.”

“So did I.”

She could see she wasn’t going to get anywhere down this track. She said, “It’s hard when the children leave. You’re bound to feel at a loss.”

“I’m not at a loss. A rock ‘n’ roll tour is something I’ve always wanted to do.”

“How can you do a rock ‘n’ roll tour on a ukulele?”

“I’ll show you.”

“No it’s all right … I believe you.”

“You think it’s a mid-life crisis, don’t you?”

“No. You’re too old for a mid-life crisis.”

It’s a book I can relate to on more than one level.

Me busking in Nottingham with a ukulele. You see the world differently when busking. Incidentally it pays (pro rata) about the same as supply teaching.

And so he sets off, by public transport. We get a feel of the country, of the towns he passes through, of the nerves required to even enter a pub carrying a musical instrument, let alone get up in front of strangers and play a couple of tunes. He’s a good travelling companion (something that is absolutely essential in a travel book. He genuinely likes the England (and eventually parts of Wales and Scotland) he is showing us. A nice mixture of diligent observer, decent wordsmith and is always quite happy to portray himself as a comic character; a sketch that is based on self-deprecation, insight and the skills acquired by a lifetime of being a professional comedy writer.

This is a polite and kindly observer. Not the sort to write a place off as awful or send someone up as ludicrous. Nevertheless there is a subtle pen at work here and a skilful satirist.

“There were indeed some grand and designer houses by the beach, but no one looked more proud of their property than the beach hut owners. In Lancing a couple were sitting out in front of theirs. She was knitting what looked like a map of South America. He was listening to the tennis on the radio. On the table between them sat a fruitcake and a pot of tea with a cosy.”

The journey is a pleasant one. This isn’t a major physical or emotional challenge as some journeys are. This is a gentle stroll, minstrel style, though the summer acres of Britain with musical interludes. The book is never short of entertaining, enlightening and at times very funny. Very few of us will ever tour as a Bowie or a McCartney or an Ed Sheeran but there are literally thousands of us who know what it is like to go down like a lead balloon (zeppelin perhaps) or receive an unexpected ecstatic response to our couple of songs in an open mic. What we mostly receive is polite indifference and Wallington is excellent on how this feels too.

Simon on a Chesterfield Open Mic night. Drowning in a sea of indifference.

I’d recommend any of Mark Wallington’s books. I think it probably helps to have been born between 1955 and 1965 to really get the full impact but I’m all in favour of privileging the late baby boomers. He made a name for himself as a script writer on Not the Nine O’Clock News (one of several high quality satirical shows from the BBC in the line of succession from Beyond the Fringe, That Was the Week that Was (TW3) and The Frost report. And the programme that introduced us to Mel Smith, Griff Rhys Jones and Rowan Atkinson). His books now fill half a shelf in my study and are all well thumbed. This is reading for pleasure. And why not? It is also a book that does what good travel books should do, and that is to make us want to get up and do it all for ourselves.

Pass me my ukulele I’m off on a road trip!

 

*They had toured together in the days before The Beatles found fame and he rang Joe Brown up years later and introduced himself with the wonderful words “Hello, I don’t know if you remember me. My name is George Harrison.”

 

Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome : 1889

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Jerome K Jerome, Michael Palin, River Thames, Three Men in a Boat

British Travel Books  : Number 7

Three Men in a Boat: To Say Nothing of the Dog!

Stephen Moore as George, Michael Palin as Harris and Tim Curry as J in the BBC’s 1975 production

We don’t think of it as a travel book. We think of it is a comedy classic, an encapsulation of a quieter, slower time, a national treasure. And it is all of these. It is the book that has made me laugh more than any other (though I have read it in the wrong mood and not found it funny at all), a book that has inspired several attempts to capture it in film (much the funniest is Stephen Frears 1975 version with Tim Curry, Michael Palin and Stephen Moore as the heroes), a spectacular popular success panned by critics and several stage shows. But it wasn’t planned as such. “I did not intend to write a funny book, at first.” wrote Jerome K Jerome.

It was meant to be a guide book, a history of the river interspersed with the occasional personal anecdote. Jerome was an aspiring writer with an eye to a book that would sell. Boating on the river had become a popular pastime. He thought a factual travel guide full of a retelling of history, geographical, topographical  and navigational detail, recommendations for accommodation and refreshment would find a market. To keep it fresh and original he lightened it with moments of “humorous relief”. He’d rowed the river often in the company of his friends George Wingrave and Carl Hentschel. Like many a travel writer since he cobbled their various jaunts into one trip from London to Oxford. The journey described is essentially fiction but that’s ok. You’ll find the book in the fiction section. The editor of the serialising magazine (Home Chimes) liked the story better than the travel detail. The book became a novel. The guide book stuff was largely blue pencilled and one of the best loved books of the late Victorian period was born; more by accident than design.

Jerome becomes J, George remains George and Karl Henschel takes on the persona of William Samuel Harris and enters the canon of English literature as one of the great comic characters. And of course, there is also a dog, Montmorency. I’ll leave an exploration of Three Men in a Boat as a comic novel for another place.

Yet it remains a book whose main attraction is travel. Very few travel books have inspired so many to follow in its plash marks. Take a couple of friends in a boat anywhere between Teddington and Oxford and someone will shout from the bank “Are you doing a three men in a boat?” It does what all good travel books aim to do. It takes you there, allows you to picture the scene, smell the dew, soak in the sun and shiver in the breeze and, above all else, makes you want to get out on the river.

The prose is heavy in stylised Romanticism, faux melancholia and deliberately over-wrought description, yet it paints a lovely picture. Despite editorial demands the author’s love of the Thames shines through in its lyricism.

“One golden morning of a sunny day, I leant against the low stone wall that guarded a little village church, and I smoked and I drank in deep, calm gladness from the sweet, restful scene – the grey old church with its clustering ivy and its quaint wooden porch, the white lane winding down the hill between tall rows of elms, the thatched-roof cottages peeping above their trim-kept hedges, the silver river in the hollow, the wooded hills beyond.” The scene is close to Thomas Gray’s Country churchyard both geographically and poetically.At other times he can be found giving practical advice. “We reached Sunbury lock at half past three. The river is sweetly pretty just before you come to the gates, and the backwater is charming: but don’t attempt to row up it.”

As ever the explanation is given in the form of a delightful and very funny anecdote.

Sometimes he gets very close to the practical guide to the river he originally intended.

“We sculled up to Walton, a rather large place for a riverside town. As with all riverside places, only the tiniest corner of it comes down to the water, so that from the boat you might fancy it was a village of some half-dozen houses all told. Windsor and Abingdon are the only towns between London and Oxford that you can really see anything of from the stream. All the others hide round corners and merely peep at the river down one street; my thanks to them for being so considerate, and leaving the river banks to woods and fields and waterworks.”

At still other times we get Jerome the light historian:

Jerome K Jerome with Montmorency

“From Marlow up to Sonning is even fairer yet. Grand old Bisham Abbey, whose stone walls have rung to the shouts of Knights Templars, and which, at one time, was the home of Anne of Cleeves and at another of Queen Elizabeth, is passed on the right bank just half a mile above Marlow Bridge. Bisham Abbey is rich in melodramatic properties. It contains a tapestry bed-chamber, and a secret room hid high up in the thick walls.The ghost of the Lady Hoby, who beat her little boy to death, still walks there at night, trying to wash its ghostly hands clean in a ghostly basin.”

And so it continues capturing time and place in a narrative as rich and varied and flowing as the Thames itself. And it feels different each time it is read. With Heraclitus we cannot enter it twice. The book changes according to the age you read it, who you read it with (it is one of the very best books for reading aloud), what mood you are in or what the weather is like outside. “No man ever steps in the same river twice for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man”.

The real pleasure in Three Men in a Boat is in the comic presentation, the wonderful cast, the selection and telling of the most delightful anecdotes, in the laugh-yourself-inside-out comic timing. But the wonder of the book is the journey and the description of the journey. It should be firmly filed under fiction in any respectable library, but I am more than happy to include it in this series of travel books.

Quite simply one of my favourite books of any genre.

Journey Through Britain by John Hillaby 1968

Tags

Bill Bryson, Caithness, Cornwall, John Hillaby, Land's End to John o' Groats

British Travel Books Part 5

As far as I regard myself as a travel writer I owe a great deal to a lot of other writers but none more so than to John Hillaby. This is the man who brought travel writing within reach of the ordinary mortal. The man who showed that you didn’t have to be fluttering in exotic places and the man who finally struck the balance that has been adhered to by almost all who came after him. He is very much a part of his own story but not the star of it. He’s present but not obtrusively so. At any point the reader can swap places with him and imagine themself as being there. Something you can’t say of many. He provides the eyes and ears and we do the looking and listening. He disappears from the surroundings every bit as much as we do ourselves.

John Hillaby on the very first day of his walk on the Cornish coast. Careful planning can reduce the size of your rucksack.

The balance is between the journey, the traveller and the things we encounter along the way. Hillaby lets us experience the entire route, the changing faces, the rain and the shine, from Cornwall to Caithness. He is our expert, sharing knowledge to make us expert too. It’s the same technique that has made Bill Bryson so popular. No coincidence that Hillaby is one of very few travel writers Bryson references, and about the only one he does with esteem. The key is a tremendous amount of research. To become an expert before we even set off and to build on this expertise as we experience it all and then to put on a third layer of study once we come back. Hillaby was an almost permanent fixture in the London Library for weeks and months before he set off. Bryson does the same and it’s the model I’ve followed.

It was stunning, almost awe inspiring to be travelling through the pages with one who seems to know so much. It’s the journalist’s art. To become an expert in order to share that expertise. Lazy writers can rely on Wikipedia these days. But it shows. It is also entirely pointless. The acquisition of knowledge and understanding is why we travel. It has to be real if it is to serve any worthwhile purpose. There is no substitute for delving deeply into books, articles, papers. Both Hillaby and his more celebrated successor work the hard yards. Both are from a background of newspapers; rigorous newspapers; The Times, The Independent, The Manchester Guardian. Papers where facts matter more than prejudice; where the story takes precedence over the storyteller. (I’m talking about the pre-murdoch Times here though I have to admit that even under the steely gaze of its current proprietor it is probably still Britain’s best newspaper if you want to know what is going on (though you may have to filter it first).

Land’s End

We were blessed with great travel writers in the middle of the last century: Patrick Leigh Fermor, Jan Morris and Eric Newby to name but three. They were brilliant wordsmiths with the common touch. But they wrote about places you simply couldn’t visit unless you were very privileged. I’m not sure I’d claim that Hillaby was right up there with them in terms of literary merit (though the boy could write) but he was the first to bring this readable style, this researched expertise and his gentle personality to bear on The British Isles. When he set out to walk from Land’s End to John O’ Groats in 1968 he was by no means the first to do the walk. But he was the first to make it a truly shared experience.

Chun Quoit

“If…you decide…to walk across your own, your native land they tell you it’s been done  many times before. Men have set off on foot, on bicycles, on tricycles. Somebody even pushed a pram from Land’s End to John o’ Groats.” Journey Through Britain p10

What made John Hillaby’s walk different was that he was going to avoid all roads (he mostly succeeds) and he was going to turn the walk into a beautiful and inspiring book. He isn’t interested in whether it could be done. The beauty of the book is in its human size. An average human; someone very like the reader. We can be inspired by those whose talents, strengths and abilities dwarf our own. I’m more inspired by people who more resemble myself, in all my great mediocrity, achieving remarkable things. Hillaby is an almost perfect Everyman figure.

Tintern Abbey

“For me the question wasn’t whether it could be done, but whether I could do it. I’m fifty. I’m interested in biology and pre-history. They are, in fact, my business. For years I’ve had the notion of getting the feel of the whole country in one brisk walk: mountains and moorlands, downloads and dales. Thick as it is with history and scenic contrast, Britain is just small enough to be walked across in the springtime. It seemed an attractive idea. There was a challenge in the prospect.” (ibid)

He expected to be one of the last to do it. In fact he is probably responsible for thousands of us amateur writers and wanderers for setting our personal challenges. Challenges which, in this age of blogs and social media, can be professionally recorded and shared following the Hillaby model.

Hillaby looking across a loch at Beinn Eighe

By the time the book was planned I was 9 years old. I’d already clocked up several Lakeland peaks, sections of the newly created Cleveland Way and a day or two’s slog along the Pennine Way. My dad liked walking as a day out sort of activity and I liked walking along side him. He taught me how to use a map and compass and he took me to the sort of places where you need them. It instilled a life long passion for getting from A to B by the oldest method of all; that of putting one foot in front of the other. I imagine that John Hillaby came by his love of the hills and byways in the same manner. It is a love that shines through. This man likes walking in the same way that I do. The exercise, the way it allows you to get to places cars or bicycles can’t take you, the freedom, the aches and pains. And the country he walked through has changed remarkably in that time. 

Larach

Long distance paths are a new idea. In 1968 the path may have followed established rights of way but that didn’t mean that a right of way was provided. Landowners and farmers were yet to be shown the advantages of having walkers cross their land. I know of a farmer who still keeps a bull in a field to deter ramblers from a path where they are legally entitled to wander and which is clearly marked on the Ordnance Survey map. In 1968 there were fewer paths and more obstacles. This book played a part in increasing the former and eliminating many of the latter.

He crosses many counties. The intention of avoiding walking on roads and Bridal Ways is a considerable challenge all along the way but it makes the story. He spends the vast majority of his time alone; so much so that when on Wenlock Edge he copes with the heat by indulging in a few miles of naturist strolling. No exhibitionism here. He was a shy man enjoying the freedom and would have covered up at the slightest hint that there was anyone else about. That there wasn’t anybody else about shows how times have changed.

Base of a Glenelg broch

I like the information we get along the way. The storyteller’s art is an ancient one and the storyteller has to know where to start and when to stop; when to satisfy expectations and when to surprise. All that time in the British Library allows him the choicest fruit from obscure stories and the journey is heavy-laden with such offerings. We pass tin mines and are given a history lesson, pass stone circles and are amongst the archeologists. And all the time his feet move through Cornwall, across Bodmin Moor and into Devon and up onto Dartmoor. The history is brought to life and the present set out before us. It really is the next best thing to walking it yourself, and certainly whets the appetite.

I’ve covered much of the ground myself, either on foot or on a bicycle and these are the sections I liked the best. Because they confirm what I’d felt from the first paragraph. That all is true (incidentally the sub-title of Shakespeare’s Henry VIII which  is far from an accurate record). I’ve read the book twice. The first time was the best part of 30 years ago. I picked it up again to skim read in order to write this piece. There was no skim reading. I began at the beginning and pretty much didn’t move until I reached the end. I liked and admired the book the first time around. I loved it the second. Simply because it is telling the truth. No rosy wash, no fictionalised encounters, no effort to present himself more heroically.

Thurso

He’s excellent company, a truly admirable man, a fine writer (who had to work hard at it, as elegant prose apparently didn’t come easily) and a trail blazer. I’m not sure what he’d think of the mass participation charity fund-raising walks of today. He wasn’t one to condemn. He’d have admired the aims and the exercise and struck off in a quieter direction.

Journey Through Britain has been out of print for some time now but it is still relatively easy to get hold of a copy for a few pence and the price of the postage. If you began your walking life in the middle of the last century and want to re-live what it was like back then, if you enjoy knowledgeable company and a sense of challenge, all written in language, which if it isn’t literary, is at least a fine impression of literary, then I think you’ll enjoy it too.

 

All photographs are from the book.

In Your Stride by A.B. Austin

Travelling Companions Part 4 (A series of posts looking at British Travel Books)

In Your Stride by A.B Austin. Illustrated by Margaret Dobson.

This is a curio. Published in 1932 by Country Life Ltd (I’d guess the magazine people. It started publication in 1897) and written in the previous year if we are to believe the author. Plenty of reason to trust what the writer has to say but plenty of room for doubt.

Perthshire Hills by Margaret Dobson

The idea was to write a walkers’ guide aimed specifically at city dwellers, and of all city dwellers, particularly those who live in London and who have limited leisure time. Austin hoped that the book would become an essential item in every ruck sack. I have absolutely no idea how many copies were sold. It is still possible to get hold of it but it has obviously been out of print for a very long time. My guess is that the magazine backing would have ensured a decent print run but this is some way short of being a forerunner of Alfred Wainwright.

There is something of the Wainwright about this book though. The author has the same companionable manner, the same quiet authority and the same way of describing things in terms almost of their Platonic ideal rather than in simple past tense narrative. The tense is indeterminate. Often fluctuating between subjunctive, conditional and a vague imaginary tense often used by teachers of creative writing when using a technique known as visualisation. Instead of saying something like,”the valley is long and slopes broadly in an east-west axis with pasture, crops and trees” he says things more along the lines of. “Imagine a sloping valley, which might be trimmed with trees. A man would have to be fit and healthy to traverse it in a single day.” Everything is described in terms of ‘could’ or ‘should’ (what Hector in the History Boys refers to as the tense of possibility). It is endearing, even charming for a while but 250 pages of it becomes vague, unspecific and even doubtful.

Crown Inn Amersham by Margaret Dobson

A second complaint is a common one among amateur writers dealing with the natural world. My mother was excellent at describing nature if you walked with her along country lanes. Put a pen in her hand however, and suddenly the world is full of joyous birdsong, babbling brooks and brooding mountains. Why does the natural world bring out the flowery poet in so many writers? My friend Mike and I walked a long distance footpath as part of our outdoor education certificate. On the route he was good company and a user of good plain English. “That hill was steep”, “There’s some weather coming over from the west, we’d better find some shelter” or “This view is beautiful. That must be Teignmouth down there”. Walking the route was only half of it. We had to produce a walkers journal and it was as though he had been injected with a shot of second rate versification. “The path continued up the slope like a disappearing snake.” “The deep silence of the night was broken only by the scuttling of mice and perhaps the occasional screech of an owl” (the reality is that he was spark out for 8 hours after downing 6 pints of Flowers’ Original) or “The distant horizon shimmered with hope for the longed for coast where cliffs and sandy beaches and children’s voices awaited our arrival.” Austin is so determined to draw London’s young men and women into the countryside that he out flowers the florist in his prose. The world he describes often has more in common with Narnia than Dartmoor or the Peak District.
“If the night has been frosty, the cart-ruts in the rides crackle underfoot and the lichens are crisp to the touch, but usually the treetops stand inverted in the little pools and the lichens are spongy and moist. As you walk, nothing seems awake but yourself. The rustle of your foot against the bracken bruises the quiet and the parted branch springs back behind you like a sleeper resenting disturbance, returning to his pillow with a petulant jerk.”

The Head of the Loch by Margaret Dobson

There’s money to be made in describing the countryside thus. Many are attracted by sylvan glens and green pastoral. They think this is what Wordsworth and Coleridge saw. Country Life, The Dalesman and even the aforementioned Wainwright created a world whose attractions were significantly imagined. A.B. Austin wasn’t an amateur. He was a journalist; and a successful one during the 20s 30s and 40s. His journalistic skills are further reason to doubt the voracity of the content of the book. Firstly he has the ability to write convincingly about whatever subject the editor pushes in his direction. Secondly he is able to make it sound exciting and enticing. He lacks modesty and begins his trek by covering in an afternoon what it took Mike and I three days to cover. (Granted we stopped at more pubs). By the time he gets into the Highlands of Scotland or the Pyrenees he is covering vast distances at night before being invited into lonely farmhouses where he is immediately given the best seat by the fire, his glass charged, his bowl filled and locals gather round to listen to the exploits of a stranger walking among mountains that are their everyday workplaces.

Like many a journey it begins well but the last twenty miles is a slog to read. It may all be as true as mathematics but quite frankly, by half way I’d stopped believing it. That doesn’t mean I’d stopped enjoying it. There is something here. Maybe aspiration, maybe encouragement, maybe raw enthusiasm that is found in good teaching. A little more plain writing. A little more letting the magnificence of the outdoors speak for itself and there is a good book here.

The best chapter is the first one “The Art of Loitering” where Austin sets out his agenda as a walker. “There are three kinds of walkers, and only one is a loiterer within the dictionary meaning. There are those who walk with grim determination as if the world were a sanded track marked in laps of twenty or thirty miles to the day. There are those who walk with a bleak purpose, far enough to coax the appetite but not far enough to derange the digestion. And there are those who walk because they can’t help it, because walking is for them part of the business of living.”
It sounds good but it doesn’t stand up to much scrutiny either as premises of a reasoned argument, or as an all embracing catalogue of those who like to walk. His key argument is that to truly enjoy walking there has got to be time to take in the environment you are walking through. You have got to have time to loiter. Unfortunately ‘loitering’ as a verb has come to have many negative connotations but we mustn’t condemn an idea simply because time has overtaken it.

Moonrise Over Exmoor by Margaret Dobson

A final thought on the copy I got sent via eBay. It’s a 1932 edition especially bound by the Lanark Library Service. In some ways it ought to be a collectors piece but it cost me less than £2. It rested on the shelves of Lanark Library for over 80 years and was taken out twice before being “formally de-accessioned” in 2013. Almost the best bit of the book is the instructions to readers pasted inside the front cover. I reproduce it in full.
“This book is lent for a period of FOURTEEN DAYS and must be returned at the expiry of that period or not later than any other such date as may be stamped on the date slip. An extension of this period may be granted at the discretion of the Librarian if application for such extension is made not later than the date on which the book is due to be returned. Fines may be imposed at the rate of 2d per week or part of a week for any period the book is kept beyond the period allowed.
Readers are requested to take every possible care of the books lent to them: damage caused to a book whilst in the hands of the reader must be made good by the reader.
If infectious disease breaks out in the home of the reader, it must be reported immediately to the Librarian who will give instructions regarding the return of the book. Books which have been in contact with infectious disease must not be returned to the Library until disinfection of the house has taken place and no book will be issued to any reader in whose home infectious disease is known to exist.
The attention of readers is drawn to the special facilities of the Library for the provision of books in all subjects. Any book of a special nature may be borrowed for a period of one month. Application for such books, accompanied by the name and full postal address of the reader, may be made to the County Librarian, Hamilton.

Hamilton Library

I feel as though I have entered another world.

Neither Nowt Nor Summat: In Search of the Meaning of Yorkshire by Ian McMillan

Tags

ian mcmillan, neither nowt nor summat, ted hughes, wars of the roses, Yorkshire

Travelling Companions  3  (A Reflection on British Travel Writing)

Before I get to a review of the book, a brief introduction for the benefit of those who may never have walked the hallowed acres of God’s own county. If you’re reading this in England you’ll probably be aware of Ian McMillan and you’ll certainly be aware that Yorkshire is unique. Not necessarily because it is better than other counties (though for a Yorkshireman this is a fact so beyond dispute as to be accepted as an acknowledged truth along with the Ten Commandments and the Rules of Cribbage!) or because it contains, in and of itself, something that is both quintessentially English, and a nationality all its own. All of this may or may not be true.

Yorkshire is the biggest of the English counties, the most culturally diverse and one of the most attractive. It contains extremes. Empty moorland, precipitous cliffs, wide sandy beaches, pulsing cities, mill towns that were once the cradle of the Industrial Revolution but are now suffering neglect and poor municipal decision making, wide fertile farmland and many lovely rivers. You’ll never be short of someone to point out your personal defects in Yorkshire. You’ll never be far from equal measures of free thinkers and bigots. It is a county of great writers: three Brontës for starters, great painters (David Hockney for one) and great musicians (Frederick Delius was from Bradford). It has given the world more than its share of pop musicians, actors and famously (at least in Yorkshire), if it had competed as a country in its own right, it would have come 12th in the medal table at The London Olympics  with 7 gold medals, 2 silver and 3 bronze.

Hutton-le-Hole. (The picture is genuine and unposed. The car did drive through the village as I was taking a few photos.)

People from Yorkshire are known to say things like “There are only two sorts of people in the world. Those who come from Yorkshire, and those who wish they did” and mean it. People from elsewhere have an oft repeated saying (loathed by Yorkshire folk) that “You can always tell a Yorkshireman, but you can’t tell him much!” Legend (purely apocryphal) has it that an old gentleman from Richmond North Yorkshire died and ascended to the pearly gates of heaven.

“Where are you from then?” asked St Peter.

“Richmond.” replied the man.

“Richmond Surrey or Richmond North Yorkshire?” asked the saintly gatekeeper.

“North Yorkshire, though I usually refer to it as the North Riding.”

“Oh dear.” said St Peter.

“Is something wrong?” enquired the man.

“No. nothing wrong. It’s just that after spending your life in Richmond North Yorkshire, you might just find heaven a little disappointing.”

It is known across England as “God’s County” or “God’s Acres”. Again these are terms usually used by those born in Yorkshire. There is also a huge rivalry between Yorkshire and its western neighbour, Lancashire. Yorkshire was the centre of the wool trade. Lancashire was cotton. Yorkshire has Leeds, Sheffield and Bradford. Lancashire has Manchester and Liverpool. Yorkshire has Scarborough, the world’s first seaside resort. Lancashire has Blackpool which became one of the biggest and most popular. More than anything there was the Wars of the Roses. A long lasting series of fifteenth century civil war battles fought under the banners of York and Lancaster. Lancashire being the Red Rose County and Yorkshire favouring the White Rose. Both sides can claim victory or defeat. The conclusive battle of these Wars was the Battle of Tewkesbury (fought hundreds of miles away in Gloucestershire) and won by the Yorkists, which placed Edward IV (possibly Edward V) and certainly Richard III on the throne of England. Richard was eventually defeated and killed at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 by the essentially Lancastrian armies of Henry Tudor (henceforth Henry VII). Henry married Elizabeth of York which combined both households and also combined the red and the white into the Tudor Rose which is half one and half the other.

Rievaulx Abbey

All of this gives grounds for rivalry until you look more closely at where the various armies came from. Geographical Yorkshire and Lancashire had very little to do with it. In fact the Yorkists drew many of their soldiers, generals and donors from west of the Pennines while the House of Lancaster had strongholds in God’s County. It’s all very confusing to anyone but a Yorkshireman. He doesn’t need historical facts to prove him right. Being right is something you are born with in the three Ridings.

What about Ian McMillan? Well he’s a very well liked poet, thinker, broadcaster, playwright and educationist. He’s always lived in Yorkshire, speaks with the broadest of vowels, supports Barnsley Football Club and has an authenticity to be envied. He knows his stuff. But he also has a sly sense of humour and you can never be truly sure when he is defending Yorkshire with a straight bat and when he is playing with a great deal of the right hand side of irony.

Ian McMillan: The Bard of Barnsley.

The book takes McMillan on journeys (mostly day trips taken with friends or on public transport as McMillan endearingly and admirably doesn’t drive) to the extremes of Yorkshire. He’s in search of what it is that makes Yorkshireness unique and he keeps asking himself the question “Am I Yorkshire enough?”

Of course you can no more define Yorkshireness without stereotype than you can define Texan or Australian or Japanese. The book becomes an enjoyable series of excursions without any great attempt at anthropology or behavioural science. He loves Yorkshire. He loves being Yorkshire. He hates being told he makes a living out of being ‘Yorkshire’, but to a large extent he does. But he is very good at it. He’s a little way short of being a JB Priestly or an Alan Bennett in the pantheon of writers who were peculiarly Yorkshire but, if not a national treasure, he’s a Yorkshire treasure.

Here’s my review.

This book wanders. This book meanders, as the poet goes on a search for Yorkshire and what makes it what it is. He looks for the epic in the seemingly trivial and often is in danger of the delivering a trivial epic. There are certainly long stretches of the book that show no evidence of the editorial blue pencil. At times it is difficult to distinguish McMillan’s search for meaning with that of his fictional Yorkshire neighbour, John Shuttleworth. Except McMillan is a storyteller and Shuttleworth a story; and Shuttleworth often that bit more believable. McMillan is certainly guilty of making up a lot of his anecdotes (so it seems to me) or liberally refining them to suit his purpose. The body language of his prose as much of a giveaway as a Yorkshire batsman taking a close interest in the crowd after the ball snicks his bat on the way to the wicketkeeper’s gloves and the umpire’s finger stays down.

Thirsk Racecourse

When he stops waffling he is suddenly very good indeed. And very funny. If you go and see him perform he’ll delight you, make you laugh, a lot. I’ve seen him several times and will go again. And he makes you laugh here when he hits the nail on the head. When he stops trying too hard to be “The Bard of Barnsley”. When he stops embroidering his prose with rich homely similes or dropping in a fancy poetic term (about every seventeen pages) to prove his bona fides.

To point out the many contradictions in the text is to point out what is meant. Yorkshire is a contradiction. It’s the ugliest county and the most beautiful. It isn’t posh but has some of the most unbearable snobs on God’s earth. It’s got local hairdressers where you can have your arse bored off by the same conversation every time you pop in for light trim. It also has some of the country’s most respected universities. A place where you can confuse ordinary people for characters and characters for ordinary people. And it’s true and honest. But what would I know? I’m a Lancastrian.

The Halifax Piece Hall

I like his search for a perfect pork pie. I like his search, with poet Steve Ely (a very different type of poet; stronger, grittier, more complex and with something that truly captures what it is to be Yorkshire) for the poet Ted Hughes. I’ll be off to Roche Abbey very soon to sit by Laughton Pool and read his poem ‘Pike’ in the likely knowledge that I am at the very spot where it was inspired. I like the parts of the book where he tells the story of his journey simply and without the cap and bells of poetic device or rambling anecdote. And I like these parts of the book enough to overlook the parts of the journey when you want to shout “Are we nearly there yet?” or “Gerron wi’ it!” It’s like being in Yorkshire. Lots of grit and grot but when you look up, a glorious old mill or a castle on top of a hill and the sun coming out from behind a cloud.

I’m not sure that extended prose is McMillan’s strong point but he has an undoubted love of words which is infectious. He’s charmed and entertained audiences for 35 years without ever saying a great deal. And that is a strength. Some might say he’s got away wi’ it. Managed to have a good life without ever having to get a proper job. He doesn’t like being called a professional Yorkshireman but he wears the badge with pride. I kept thinking the book “were going on a bit” but now I’ve finished it I’m beginning to miss it. Pinning down what makes it good (and it is good) isn’t easy. Like Yorkshire itself.

The Road to Little Dribbling: Bill Bryson

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Barrow in Furness, Bill Bryson, HV Morton, The Road to Little Dribbling

Travelling Companions 2

I seem to have decided on the pattern of reviewing these from most recently read and working backwards. Actually I’ve been enjoying the sunshine too much and haven’t had much inclination to sit, for more than a minute or two, in front of a computer screen if nobody’s paying me. This is one of my occasional extended reviews from Goodreads. Don’t be fooled by the unimpressed nature of the piece. Like many of you I am a big fan of Bill Bryson. I just don’t think much of this book. If you haven’t read any Bryson before and you’ve got a train or plane to catch then it will pass the time quite nicely. If you haven’t read any Bryson before, and there is a choice between this book and any other that he has written…choose the other.

Here’s the review.

He’s become the Paul McCartney of travel writing; once sublime and now pushing out books that we buy because he’s given us so much pleasure in the past. Maybe it’s very clever writing: the ageing scribe and observer returns to look at England and finds it changed mostly for the worse and so reflects this in his prose; also changed for the worse. There are a few laugh out loud moments; but these are largely fart jokes. I don’t mind a curmudgeon and age suits this persona. I just don’t much like the name dropping multi-millionaire with friends in academe spending half a day in so many towns and then bemoaning that they’re not what they could be. My own home town of Barrow* comes in for a particularly sneering write-off when he walks along the economically depressed Dalton Road and is offended that there are some unemployed people there making the place look untidy with their dogs. Surely, after travelling many miles (there is no other way of getting to Barrow) he might have had a wander around the rather good Dock Museum (after-all he does like a museum in middle class towns), the glorious beaches and nature reserves of Walney or the silent splendour of Furness Abbey, the incomparable loveliness of the Roanhead sand dunes and the Duddon Estuary, even Devonshire Dock Hall; all within walking distance of where he was. No, a cup of coffee in a chain was his idea of the acceptable face of a town I am very fond of. It’s indicative of someone fulfilling contractual obligations but doing so grudgingly and with bad grace.

I’m glad he finds fault with the political mind-set that sees cheese-paring as the route to making Britain great again (otherwise known as austerity, otherwise known as getting the poor to pay for the excesses and mistakes of the rich). We won’t improve anybody’s quality of life, or even save much money, by closing down libraries or removing greenery from urban plazas. But I’m afraid his outsider’s ability to spot the glories and weaknesses of British life has declined with passing years. Seeing the world through the windscreen of a car; and a big car at that; re-tracing steps he specifically says he won’t re-trace, re-hashing old material about the supposed delights of dried cake and hard biscuits, having a pop at a popular travel writer (in this case the pop-worthy HV Morton): it’s all a little tired. It isn’t a bad read but it is by no means a good one. Like Paul McCartney he re-invigorated his genre and delighted a generation. The old stuff is still worth the read (especially Notes From a Small Island and the wonderful Walk in the Woods) but this is the travel book equivalent of Red Rose Speedway.

HV Morton withEdward Cahill in 1950

The main criticisms of HV Morton (and it has become fashionable to find fault with old Harry) are that he made half of it up and the rest he painted with a rosy brush. (Putting aside his serial adultery and desire to see fascism established in England). I’m afraid Bill Bryson is guilty of both (rosy paint brush and inventing encounters, not multiple shagging and longing for the Third Reich to cross the North Sea). His meetings with people seem stage-managed and mostly fiction and his admiration of the English countryside comes across as shallower than it probably is; as well as touching the clichéd. I’m also surprised and disappointed that he’s reverted to the ‘short walk around and then into a pub for pints of lager before a curry and bed’ approach to exploring a town.

The book opens with Bryson’s publisher pointing out the money-making possibilities of Small Island Part II. The book is little more than an exercise in cashing in. (Incidentally it does get a little wearing when this very wealthy man objects to paying a few pounds entry fee, and downright patronising when he tells us we really should be putting more into cathedral collection boxes and be raising money for charity). The title is supposed to be an evocation of the unique and slightly humorous quaintness of English place-names. It equally serves as a description of the contents and prose style.

You’ve made your pile Bill. You’ve made us very happy with your early books. Perhaps it is time to enjoy a well-earned retirement where dribbling can be, and should be, a more private activity.

*Also known as Barrow in Furness, but only by outsiders. (See also Kingston upon Hull).

Writing About England

Travelling Companions: A Short Series on Books About Britain

It was Jon who introduced me to travel books. He’d been further afield than me. I was rooted in England (with an occasional tendency to cross a Celtic border). He read of the Hindu Kush and southern archipelagoes. I didn’t think it likely I’d follow in his footsteps. Why not read about where you’ve been? he said and gave me Paul Theroux’s Kingdom By the Sea. Loved it. And I was off.

Up until then I’d found the planning of a trip as good as the travelling of it. I was invariably on foot, bicycle or a railway line. A railway journey around places I’d been, by someone who saw more than I did, made it a three stage thing. There was now the planning, the doing, and the reading about other people doing. To see the world through your own eyes is a very special thing to do. To see it through the eyes of others, especially the keener eyes of people like Theroux, Betjeman, Priestley, is almost better. Why stick to one life, to one journey, when a library allows you to have as many as you want?

This was in 1987, still four years shy of Bill Bryson setting forth on his genre changing journey with Neither Here Nor There and eight years before his astonishing Notes From a Small Island put travel writing into the best sellers list. I tend to stay away from the crowds in all respects but blimey it was a good read.

From John Byng in the reign of the third George to Bryson the travel story developed three ingredients: the journey itself, the individual places visited and the huge presence of the storyteller. Byng may give you a passing glimpse of Bigleswade in the 1790s but he gives you a lingering insight to his thoughts on the journey. His reaction to a castle, a town, a mountain may take a sentence or two. His reaction to the sauce served with his chops is often a good deal longer. Bryson rarely fails to filter the factual through his own prejudices and ability to tell the real thing from the fake. (An ability that has waned considerably in the last ten years: the prejudice is still there – and often still amusing – but the judgement has diminished.)

It seems (to me at least) time to pull the threads of my reading together. But where do you start and, more surprisingly, where do you stop? Starting is easier. Chronological is always a simple and safe plan. Either chronological in the order they were written or the order in which they were read. Either is fine. But where to stop? What constitutes travel writing? Where does it merge with local history or geography, national history or natural history? Is JB Priestley’s great book a travelogue or a capturing of place in time? And what about fiction? Doesn’t Middlemarch, or even Barry Hines’ Kes, capture the time and the place as well if not better than a man (it seems a strangely male dominated genre) on a horse/train/bicycle with a notebook? Who captures the essence of Nottinghamshire better than DH Lawrence or Dorset better than Thomas Hardy? Several of Dickens’ most popular novels (Pickwick Papers, David Copperfield) are disguised travel books. I’ve literally walked in the footsteps of Howard Spring and Ian McEwan and found it very familiar. And then there is poetry. Owen Sheers devoted an entire book to the way poets have produced their own portrait of Britain. Norman Nicholson captured the history of lakeland off the beaten track in his verses and then went back and captured it again in his prose. I could go on, and probably will.

This short series of posts is an act of filing, recording, cataloguing. It’s 32 years since Jon gave me the Paul Theroux. Since then I’ve been devoted to travel writing. I’d very much like to read an account of my own reading and I’m the only one who can write it. I’ve written a little of what I have seen of Britain. This is my English journey through  through other people’s eyes.

I’ll begin with the book that currently rests on my bedside table.

Engel’s England: Thirty-nine counties, one capital and one man by Matthew Engel

You’ll find this on the convenient tables in Waterstones where they put the books that are already selling well; a process helped by ‘buy one get the next half price’ stickers. It deserves its prominence. He’s a writer whose judgement is still clear, whose wry observational style is worth a chuckle or two per chapter, who isn’t afraid to call a monstrosity a monstrosity, greed greed and still see the beauty shining through. It doesn’t take long to get the Engel angle on a place. This won’t please everyone. Plenty of people will buy it in expectation of a rose coloured pastoral idyl.They will be partly satisfied. I’m two thirds of the way through and the only county he’s visited so far that I could live in (if I were to use this book as my only guide) is Derbyshire. But this balances well with my own findings. He’s attracted by the same things as me; living history, tradition, good independent shops, pubs with good beer and no television screens. He’s put off by the same things: dullness, waste, snootiness, lack of generosity. And I’ve come to the same conclusion. The only county I could live (happily) in is Derbyshire. Apparently he gets excited about London. I do too, but can only cope for three days at the most after which time I’m clamouring for simple peace and quiet.

He’s the same generation as me and, for that matter, Bill Bryson. We all share the same fault. We remember all of these places as being different, and usually much better than they are now. We don’t go to Ulverston (to choose an example I know well and love dearly) and see the perfectly fine Sun Inn on Market Street and describe it as it is. We see what was there. We see the mess an architect made of the corner, the few sad stalls where once a market bustled, we see the inevitable Tesco Metro where we once bought pick and mix. Maybe it is time for travel books to be written by someone in their early twenties who sees a town for what it is now, not for what is was back when ten bob was enough for a night out with enough change to pay the milkman.

Engel’s England is a fine book despite this. His sense of nostalgia is kept in check by his perceptiveness and his descriptions are fair and honest. I’ve lived in Devon and North Yorkshire. I love them  both but I wouldn’t want to live there again and this book pretty much captures why I feel this way. (Mind you, if the right house came up in Scarborough I might be tempted.)

The key to this book is that he travels to the counties as history and geography created them. This is done strictly to pre 1974 lines. (The 1972 Local Government Act redrew county boundaries for the purpose of rationalising provision. Out went historic counties like Rutland and Westmoreland and in came places that nobody can place on a map; Avon, Salop, Cleveland, and regions like Hyndburn and Kirklees (Accrington and Huddersfield in old money)). Happily local pressure has got rid of some of these changes – Rutland was abolished in 1974 but made a comeback in 1995 – but a great deal was lost and very little gained by the changes. Not all were bad. I myself am a proud Lancastrian who saw my home moved into Cumbria. I’ve never liked the idea of Cumbria and certainly never felt Cumbrian. But a great number, especially of those who continued to live there, like their new addresses very much.

This leads on to another point for which Lancashire is a very good example. What happens to an industrial county when the industry is removed and precious little is put back in its place? Engel deals with this eloquently, with affection but sadness. I can see why my old friends and neighbours are happy to turn away from the few surviving mills and shipyards and point their futures at the mountains and lakes.

It’s a first class read. It’s funny and sharply observed. But it’s painful too. Unless it falls away badly in the last hundred pages (which I don’t expect it to) I recommend it heartily. Is it as good as Notes From a Small Island? It gives it a good run for its money and is certainly vastly superior to The Road to Little Dribbling.