What was your favorite subject in school?
At St Andrew’s Rochester, the one school I loved, I found real joy in learning. My favourite subject at the time was probably History. I was an avid collector of Ladybird Books but only the history ones. I remember, particularly, a fascination with Horatio Nelson and the Battle of Trafalgar. As I mentioned in a recent blog I produced a 4 page newspaper about the event complete with adverts for a school project! One of the benefits at that time was that the Tudors were not taught every other year as they seemed to be during my children’s school days. I did very early on develop a dislike for Henry VIII and that has hardened since those days. He was one of the most unpleasant people ever to be in charge of the country and the way he became a folk hero never sat well with me. Instead of him, we learnt about Victoria, the Romans and Boadecia as she was then referred to and Explorers across the ages.
Geography was another subject that I enjoyed because it was focused on facts about countries. We had a slide show once in class that showed the journey from cocoa bean to chocolate and I was absolutely fascinated by the journey from primary source to end product and the work of the women (almost exclusively) who picked, sorted and began processing the cocoa beans. It gave me a whole new appreciation of the bars of chocolate I ate, an appreciation that has continued to this day.
Looking back, I remember Arithmetic as we called it in those days. I was interested in numbers and I proved to be a natural at mental arithmetic. We used to have very long times table tests which I loved and did very well at, and to this day I can calculate numbers in my head for fun!
I have written about Singing Together at length in three blog posts and if you want to take a look at them I have linked to the main one above. In addition there are two Christmas themed entries that you can take a look at with the second link reflecting my St Andrew’s experience.
All of these subjects were taught in an engaging way, by excellent teachers in a supportive environment. My enthusiasm for these areas of learning did not, however, survive my move to Secondary school where anything other than surviving the day intact was the furthest thing from my mind. I wonder how common that was and still is?
How do you manage screen time for yourself?
I manage screen time by reading paperback books and, very occasionally, hardback books if they are very special. One such book is the final story from Lyra’s universe. The first three books that make up the His Dark Materials trilogy were ones I read to my children. We followed the adventures of Lyra and Will to the surprisingly bittersweet end. The Book of Dust trilogy started with La Belle Sauvage, continued with The Secret Commonwealth and ends with The Rose Field.
The Story
We pick up the story with Lyra and Pantalaimon, her daemon, separated and searching for answers both inward and outward. Lyra is trying to get to the Red Building and Pan is trying to find her imagination. The story brings in The Magisterium, the organised religion of Pullman’s story, under the subtle influence of Marcus Delamere who has found a way to reshape the organisation so that it acts to his will. He is looking for Lyra but he isn’t the only one. Malcolm, the young hero of La Belle Sauvage is searching for her so that he can once again be her protector, but with the desperate hope that he can be more despite the 11 year age gap. Olivier Bonneville, the son of the man killed by Malcolm 20 years earlier is tracking both of them to exact revenge for the killing of his father and the theft of his alethiometer, which he uses to search for answers to benefit himself and others, as long as those others are useful to him. The cast of human characters also include Alice, Malcolm’s companion through the dangers of two decades earlier, Abel Ionidies, the fixer and guide who is so much more than he seems on the surface and Leila Pervani, his old colleague who works for the Magisterium. As well as the human characters, the Witches from the North return and we meet the Gryphons, a race of immensely proud winged creatures who value only gold and those who can supply it and work with it.
It is a world of shifting alliances with people who are loyal to no one apart from themselves, people who are loyal only to those in power and those who are caught up in the games that everyone else is playing. I realised after about a hundred pages that Pullman was in fact writing one of those spy stories that were so popular in the past. At so many points in the story, you are suspicious of the people who say they have Lyra’s best interests at heart. We see her being threatened with death, imprisonment and the worst kind of assault and without Pantalaimon by her side she is literally half the person she used to be. To be separated from your daemon is against the nature of the world and she is looked on with fear, anger, and despised by those who see her as being against nature. She is, however, protected by a loose confederation of allies who often step in when everything seems to be lost. The Magisterium has found out about the doors between the Worlds that Will opened and they are desperate to close them as the very existence of them and of Dust itself disproves the entire basis of their religious beliefs. All of the characters are trying to get to the Red Building, some to get through the door within, some to destroy that door and others to see if they can control what is on the other side. What awaits them if they do get there?
My Thoughts
I wanted to race through this book, but at the same time I wanted to savour it. The final story of any series is the one you want to read but do so with the bittersweet knowledge that this is it. The world and the story will finally be at an end, and you know that Pullman will not make the ending a nice neat one tied up in a bow. I am very happy to say that the ending is both satisfying and open ended. It is one that you could never see coming but one that is also absolutely true to everything that preceded it.
Pullman has made no secret of his distaste for organised religion or of his anger at what human beings are doing to the Earth in the name of profit and power. To him, all those at the head of these organisations are deeply flawed, deeply unpleasant and deeply wrong. What he has done here is to make that viewpoint it an integral part of his world. Like Terry Pratchett he uses the world he has created to reflect our own world back to us. The way that no one in power can be trusted and the way that allegiances shift for all but the most fanatical rings so true and roots his spy story and his fantastic world in the reality of our own. However, in this last of his six books, written over a span of 30 years, he occasionally allows a few chinks of light to shine through showing that even in the darkness there is still hope even it is far away and very faint.
I read the first two books of the trilogy, which were published eight and six years ago respectively, recently to prepare myself for The Rose Field and I strongly recommend that you do the same. To plunge straight into this book would be too overwhelming in terms of the story otherwise. Philip Pullman has written one of the greatest series of books ever published and I will return to them again sometime and definitely understand them in a slightly different way.
Do you need time?
I have a vague memory of seeing someone giving a TED Talk or something similar. He spoke about a person being given money at the start of each day which they had to use by the end. They couldn’t save the money, so any not spent by the end of the day was taken from them. They could spend it on themselves or on others as they wished.
He suggested that you would think very carefully about how you spent that money every day if that was the case. You would ensure that you could put it to the best possible use. He then told his audience that it was how they should look at time. There are 1440 minutes in each day and we owe it to ourselves to spend as many of those minutes as possible in ways that benefit ourselves or others. Sleep is a good use of that time because it allows you to make more effective use of the fortune you are given if you are wise. Work is a good use of that fortune, but so too are family and friends. I would actually suggest that they are a more lasting and more important use, because they give you love and security, two things work does not. Writing my blog is a good use of my ‘money’ but just aimlessly scrolling is a waste of it. Watching TV or listening to music can help you to relax and maybe give you the opportunity to share your passion with someone else. Finally, spending that time with those you love will always be, to me at least, the most effective investment of all.
So, spend your time like you spend money. If you have wasted it, acknowledge that and move on, because self recrimination wastes even more! If you have spent it well, you can see it as an investment for the future in terms of lovely memories. I am now going to spend the rest of my 1440 minutes as wisely as I can.
What will your life be like in three years?
There is a saying, ‘God laughs at the plans of man’ and whether you believe in God or you wish to substitute the word Universe, the basis of that saying is an obvious truth.
At no point in my adult life have I ended up a 3 year period where I thought I would. At 18 I was just starting my first job. Three years later I had been in the Royal Air Force, been invalided out and spent a summer in Florida. Three years after that I had finished my first year at University and I was engaged. Three years after that I was a teacher. Three years further on I was in Japan. You get the picture!
Now, I realise that most people will not have as much variety in their lives as I do, but every year when I look back I see surprises, and if I look back in sets of three those surprises multiply, often by far more than a factor of three! I am sure that in work or personal lives, even the most predictable existence takes you to places you never expected. Three years ago I never expected to have given up full time year round teaching and I have no idea now what the next three months might hold let alone the next three years!
I think predictions are as good for everyday life as they are for the economy! Embrace the uncertainty, go along with the occasional discomfort and stop wasting your time trying to envision your life or even yourself in three years. You will find out where you will be in three years time on November 4, 2028 so you might as well wait until then!
Invent a holiday! Explain how and why everyone should celebrate.
I was watching a Hallmark movie the other day called The Christmas Quest. They are films you can very easily take your brain out to watch and I frequently do! The film itself was a very different example of the genre, being set in Iceland and reflecting on the genuine Icelandic myth of the 13 Yule Lads. It’s a great piece of folklore that I may base a blog on nearer Christmas. Anyway, at one point in the movie one of the characters mentioned Jólabókaflóð or Christmas Book Flood. This is a traditional celebration of reading where, on the night of Christmas Eve, people give books to each other and then settle down to read them. It’s a fantastic idea and it is the basis of my own holiday Childhood Reading Day.
Taking place on December 28 this new festival will give everyone a chance to recover from the excesses of Christmas, which I absolutely love by the way, and to spend time with family, friends or just your memories. You either find, buy or are given a book from your childhood that you loved and you spend as much time as you like rereading it on the day itself and maybe on the following days. Now that’s the personal part of the holiday. This holiday, however, is meant to be a time for sharing with those who are close to you. You can tell your partner, children, grandchildren or friends why this book means so much to you. Maybe share stories or thoughts about your younger self to allow others to find out something about what you were like as a child. I say that because all too often, in the West in particular, we criticise people for revisiting their childhood selves. We tell them to ‘grow up’ if they are watching or reading something for a younger age group, and forget how important those years are and how we should keep in touch with them. I think it comes from the Bible verse requiring us to ‘put away childish things’ which we have taken to mean that we need to completely cut our current selves off from our younger selves. We do this at our detriment because it is that attitude that removes a lot of the wonder from life.
The date is movable but the sentiment is one that we should hold to all year round. If you live in the UK, value children’s imagination and you want to encourage those who cannot otherwise access books to brighten up their lives, go to https://www.booktrust.org.uk/ and take a look at their Christmas appeal. If you live elsewhere there will be similar organisations in your country.
Happy Childhood Reading Day
David Pearce - Popular Culture and Personal Passions 