Concentration

There's a moment in Pulp Fiction where Samuel L Jackson and John Travolta (Jules and Vincent) confront some minor hoodlums in a small apartment. These guys have taken something that belonged to a Mr Big who can afford really good muscle to get it back.

Whilst one of the punks is trying to blurt out an explanation Jules shoots his buddy on the sofa saying 'I'm sorry. Did I break your concentration?' Yes. That worked.

I think I have pretty high powers of concentration. Eighteen years of my life spent in open-plan offices probably made me better than most at blocking out distracting noises. Once at Eagle Star Insurance someone backed a lorry containing girders through the office window. That was a Jules moment. But conversation and background buzz? I could ignore that.

But recently I've got worse. Used to working at home alone most of the day the pandemic has delivered me with first one, and now two companions. Planning for our retirement next year we have been trying to concentrate enough on finding a place to live. Our other housemate is also house-hunting. Both of us may have been successful. We're waiting on completions. My final year in ministry is not quite the walk in the park I had planned. My concentration got shot.

To all intents and purposes I am doing OK but for two months I wasn't able to read. I'd pick up a book and read a chapter but then have no idea what I just read.

It's getting better. The habit of regular diaried reading days has been part of my DNA for 20 years now. Even if I only manage a few short chapters of some simple, but improving, books it keeps me ticking over. Not 200 pages a day with studious notes, but maybe 75/100 and some progress, a few quotes written down and a sense of personal development. 

One thing that I find helpful on these reading days is variety. I'll pick 7 or 8 of the 30 books I have on the go at any one time and read a chapter from each. I'm amazed how often these chapters inform each other and feed into a grand thought about something altogether different. I begin with the shortest chapters because then, psychologically, I'll have dome three books in the first hour. I'm an easy person to fool, me.

Sometimes I share this insight with others and it is dead marmitey. Some look as if I have changed their lives for ever; others as if I am no longer connected to my trolley.

One of the cave rescuers who performed an endurance dive to rescue some lads a few years back was interviewed. The interviewer asked 'I suppose when you get to that point where you are not sure you can make it you rely on your courage.' He was corrected, and quickly. 'No. You rely on your training.'

The habits and skills you develop over your lifetime in your chosen profession will hold your hand when your concentration is no longer with you. It's your training. And with that I will pick up today's first book. Enjoy your Marmite.

Holiday Reading

Here is a my annual service for those for whom the words 'activity' and 'holiday' belong not on the same sun-lounger. Scores represent the holiday escapism factor and nothing necessarily to do with literary merit. Slightly light list this year due to presence of other members of the family week one and football week two.

Lee Child - Trip Wire (6/10)

It all began back on June 7th and finishing the last 100 pages of a Jack Reacher thriller whilst waiting for a plane. Given there are several more books in the series beyond this one you will deduce that our hero wins again. Not without being shot in the chest though. Not easy this lone-wolf crime-fighting stuff.

John Le Carré - A Legacy of Spies (5/10)

The usual slow-paced, developing narrative as a former intelligence officer is invited back for a chat about an operation many years ago that may have been a bit more, or possibly less, than described at the time. Someone in government has the papers and wants to see heads roll. A spy's career is never behind them. Just a bit too slow for me and the end didn't satisfy. But if you've read le Carré you'll know what to expect.

Michael J. Malone - House of Spines (7/10)

Spine-tingling ain't really my bag (must read a Stephen King some day) but this caught my eye as a cross-dressing narrative. Starts with 'guy inherits possibly haunted house' premise but does some wonderful things with the idea. The 'spines' of the title are the book jackets of the house's library. The super-natural is a girl who likes listening to stories. Then there are some people who think the inheritance is flawed. Nicely done.

Jon McGregor - Reservoir 13 (9/10)

I do seem to have filled my bag with slow-paced narratives this trip. But if you need to take your time on a journey then McGregor is great company. Never a word out of place and an ability to describe things we don't normally see - the spaces between people, the seasons changing in the background, the relentless cycle of village life. A girl goes missing. Time passes slowly. I note the Broadchurchy subtext that your sins will find you out. An investigation into a big crime often uncovers some smaller ones along the way.

Lisa McInerney - The Glorious Heresies (7/10)

What a yarn. Felt like I was discovering the missing connections between Father Ted, East Enders and Breaking Bad. Great characters. Mainly perfectly horrid so who do you root for?

Daniel Kehlmann - F (A Novel) (7/10)

Translated from German this story explores Arthur who has a life-changing experience after reluctantly going on stage for a hypnotist. We mainly see the world through his sons who grow up to be an art-forger, a dodgy financier and a fat unconvincing priest.

Fate, forger, fiddler and faithless. Whose fault is it all? And which is the 'F' of the title?

After this I started Jim Crace's Arcardia, which I know will be good because it 's Jim Crace. In between I read chapters from Tim Harford's Messy but haven't finished yet. However I know now why Le Corbusier's innovative clean architecture wasn't popular with the workers it was built for and why they put gnomes in their gardens. Also, why CPAS's clean-desk policy was a knife in the side of creativity. More on this later.

Read

A voice said 'Read' and I said 'What shall I read? There are too many books and I shall not have time to read them all.'

I am sitting in what is now known as my sabbatical chair. For many weeks last autumn I had the rare privilege of being able to read widely, well and without pressure.

Today is a long-diaried reading day, something I try to do monthly but about eight a year actually happen. It is the first since I returned to duties before Christmas. After the joy of reading without deadline today feels too short. It has taken me three hours to get to a point where the past is sufficiently reviewed and the future sufficiently planned for me to relax. Then I had to pick the books to get into. Done now.

I only chose to write this because one of the skills of a role where the job description is a bottomless pit (clergy always have something they could be doing) is to unashamedly take down-time whenever it comes along. Those clergy who can actually work from 7.00 a.m. to midnight six days a week without something giving are very unusual. I have avoided that ever since my second post in Chester-le-Street when my things-to-do list got so big I couldn't read all the tasks in one sitting.

So despite a lot to do tomorrow, which could be started today, I am going to read for a few hours now without guilt. It will give me a better ability to do more in less time in future. For I will know things I won't have to look up; I will have access to quotes and examples for talks which will save preparation time and, perhaps most importantly, I will feel better.

Me and Physics

I thought I would read a book about physics. Either I had no natural aptitude, or I was insufficiently stimulated, but I never grasped it at all at school. I learned to do a very good impression of my physics teacher though - which seemed more important at the time.

Thing is, I have quite a good track record of 'grasping' things when necessary. If I see the point I will devote time to grasping. I even gave eight years of my life to vehicle identification once I realised nobody in the motor insurance world would take me seriously if I couldn't tell a Vauxhall Viva from a Ford Escort. It was 1973 by the way. After I left in 1981 I vowed never to be interested again.

I did the same for early church history which I mastered for about two days in 1983 and it contributed to a theology degree. I may get back to that one.

So I am reading a book about physics. The one illustrated. And I am underlining physics-type sentences that overlap with the arts world. Ones without equations, basically.

You see I can grasp:

...space curves where there is matter.

...space and gravitational field are the same thing.

So, although Riemann's constant would be jolly useful if I needed to do calculations, my two pull-quotes are the heart of an understanding of relativity. And I've only finished one chapter.

Now, on to quanta.

Why did I get so old before I began to find that learning stuff is fun?

Thought for the Day

As delivered at BBC Radio Bristol just now:

As you have heard, today is World Books Day. If you had to dress as a favourite character from a book, who would you choose?

There are web-sites that will give you ideas. And the supermarkets stock off-the-shelf costumes.

I'm not sure teachers would recognise my hero, Douglas Adams' wonderful creation Dirk Gently - the holistic detective. He wears a brown tattered suit, a red checked shirt which doesn't match and a green striped tie which refuses to speak to either of them. He talks and eats pizza but rarely appears to listen. Or as Adams puts it, 'The traffic through his mouth was incessant. His ears remained unused in normal conversation.'

Gently believes in the ultimate inter-connectedness of all things and so if a car speeds away from a crime he will, as likely as not, follow a different vehicle in the firm expectation that their paths will cross again some day.

It makes his cases interesting and his expenses extraordinary.

In another of my favourite books, the Gospel of Mark, Jesus also constantly surprises people with his reaction to situations. He never does what they expect. One of Mark's favourite sentences, as Jesus touches the untouchable, heals the incurable, welcomes the toddler and sends the rich packing is, 'The crowd were astonished.'

For Mark there is a God, revealed in Jesus, who inter-connects all things.

I am a keen reader. A few days back I realised, with some disappointment, that I would not have time in my life to read all the books I wanted to. I tweeted this and a friend sent me a postcard the next day. It gave me today's thought, 'Life is short; read fast.'

#lovereading

I had a surprise at the age of about five. It was my turn to read with a teacher, one who was covering for my regular class teacher, and I took up my book and sat with her. I started to read from the beginning of the first book I had been given. After a few seconds she asked If this was as far as I had got. I explained that I was getting better and faster and sometimes I reached further than before but she stopped me.

'You mean you start from the beginning each time?'

Turns out nobody had introduced me to the concept of the bookmark and I thought you had to read from page 1 every session. I picked up from then on and read at the appropriate speed for my age pretty soon.

Maybe two years later I was introduced to the idea of the public library. There were few books in my home. Few that looked attractive at any rate. But my Dad took out three books a fortnight from Selly Oak Library and he signed me up. I remember their smell. At first I only took one book out at a time, terrified of being half-way through and having to take it back. But once renewals had been explained, all was well.

I think Jennings, Billy Bunter and Biggles were probably my favourites.

For a while I read my books in my bedroom last thing at night and before getting up at the weekend. Sometimes I crawled out of bed and lay in front of the disappointing electric fire, an eiderdown pulled over me. We lived in a big, draughty old house.

I don't know when it stopped. It certainly slowed down. I recall reading when off sick but finding other things to do that were more fun the rest of the time. Probably football related.

I carried on with Alastair McLeans, Ian Fleming's Bond series and various other thrillers but there was often a time when I didn't have a book on the go from aged 14-20. It was odd. I liked books but didn't read them very often.

O Level English literature pretty much devastated me with Richard Church's 'Over the Bridge' seeing me off into the dull depths of a grade 8.

My twenties changed things. I met, and married, a voracious reader. But a pre-college training course set me to read Shirley and it was a step too far. I wrote an essay on it without reading it. However, when I went back to College as a mature student I found novels a good balance to theology. Robert M. Pirsig's 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' fascinated me and I read it in the college library when I should have either been reading for an essay or at home helping with two small children.

After ordination I specifically asked a new friend about improving my reading - I had attempted self-help with a P.D. James. Heather, the friend, lent me some stuff she and her husband had enjoyed and Penelope Lively was one of the authors I discovered.

I began to read book reviews in papers and, with a little money available, to enjoy purchasing books to read and keep (or lend). Aware that an English teacher had once challenged me on my current reading and I couldn't remember anything (interrogative teachers have often made my mind go blank) I began keeping a record of my reading in a journal from about 1987. I also, influenced by some College colleagues, swapped my Daily Mail for the Times.

Some of my book shopping was influenced by covers. I loved the simplicity of the design of Faber and Faber paperbacks and found Peter Carey's 'Illywhacker' and Kazuo Ishiguro's 'An Artist of the Floating World' this way.

What am I saying to our beloved Secretary of State for Education? I think my reading set-backs were all in the classroom and my progress when I was in charge of my own destiny. Victorian novels may well be massive improving tomes but Harry Potters have done more for literacy in this country. As have Fifty Shades and Dan Brownes for adults. I don't think Michael Gove, an English graduate I believe, has the first idea what it is like not to be Michael Gove.

I love now having an eclectic reading habit. I am currently enjoying Bill Bryson's '1927'. My last five books read for pleasure were:

Life After Life - Kate Atkinson
Harvest - Jim Crace
The Last Juror - John Grisham
Politically Correct Bedtime Stories - James Finn Garner
Who I Am - Pete Townsend

I like reading, read well, fast enough and like talking about books. Because I can read I thank a teacher, maybe one of my parents too, but my memory of reading is that it was helped by freedom of choice and hindered by syllabuses.

My old friend John Dexter, a science teacher, has written an interesting blog on the subject of literacy. I commend his work.

Quote Book Index 91-100

For those new to this blog I am working though my quote books, indexing and cross-referencing them to make them more easily searchable. I am doing ten a day and choosing the best (or just most interesting) of the ten to share. Today we welcome John Habgood, former Archbishop of York to the stage:

100. The author generally does his best to prevent you invading the territory which is his own. 'I had to sweat to write it' he says 'so let the silly clot sweat to read it.' Therefore instead of going into battle (the book) assuming you will lose, go in as 'an angry young man' determined not to let the author's stupidity stop you from understanding his subject.
(Aston Training Scheme 10 year Anniversary - 20/6/87)

Have you read?

I am old enough, just about, to remember the days when, if you began a sentence with 'Have you read' (Or indeed 'Have you heard' or 'Have you seen') the answer would be positive more often than not. There was a smaller pool of popular culture in which we all fished.

By the 1990s it seemed that you could go round the dinner table and no two people had over-lapping taste to discuss.

There are exceptions. One of my sons sees one or two new films a week so if I have seen something I know I can talk about it with him. Others know that I will have an opinion on an alarming selection of contemporary music apart from squeaky warbly bing bong, or opera as I think it is known colloquially.

So what a joy it was today to find a clergy colleague with whom I am reading, listing his authors read for pleasure and finding some overlap. Philip Roth, Jonathan Raban, Douglas Coupland; we both love them. Today we got to grips with Tom Wright's Virtue Reborn - excellent hour. More often than not, I love my job.

E-reader

Mrs Mustard has purchased an e-reader. After a few initial skirmishes with the software she has now downloaded 115 books to read on holiday (which should be enough). I am surprised she was converted but I still find the act of holding paper is part of the reading experience I don't want to ditch, yet. I spend a lot of time reading web-pages but that is, somehow, different. Anyone else have views?