The Russlander by Sandra Birdsell

This book covers a little-known aspect of Ukrainian history – the lives of the Mennonites in what’s now Zaporizhzhia Oblast, and the destruction of their communities during the time of the short-lived Ukrainian People’s Republic at the end of the First World War.  I have to admit that I knew very little about this.  I associate the Zaporizhzhia area with Cossacks, because of the Zaporizhzhian Sich and I associate German/Dutch immigration into Catherine the Great’s Empire with Volga Germans, because of Gabriel Heinze.  That’s Gabriel Ivan Heinze, formerly of United, who is descended from some of the many Volga Germans who emigrated to Argentina.

Anyway, in 1789, a group of Mennonites, of Dutch heritage, living in Danzig in the Kingdom of Prussia, which is now Gdansk in Poland (keep up), moved to the Chortitza area.  The Chortitiza area is near Ekaterinoslav, in the Russian Empire … which is now Dnipro, formerly Dnipropretovsk in Ukraine.   Again, keep up.   And I’m well aware of the pogroms carried out against Jews during the Ukrainian People’s Republic, but I have to say that I didn’t really know how bad the attacks on Mennonites were.

That makes the book sound really miserable.  The first part of it is really quite uplifting.  If anything, it’s too idealised – although the Mennonites have been in Ukraine for over a century, there’s a sense of being pioneers, being settlers, but with none of the struggles and setbacks that you might expect in a book about pioneering.  Even when the Great War breaks out, we don’t hear that much about it.  The men volunteer, not as soldiers but to offer medical assistance – like some Quakers did in Britain – but we don’t see anything of life at the front, because our focus is on the women at home.  But then everything changes.

I’m a little bit confused with the timeline, because the book shows the attack on the community in question as being in 1917, under the auspices of Simeon Pravda.  Pravda was a real person, an anarcho-communist who was one of Nestor Makhno’s lieutenants.  Makhno, who was based in the Ekaterinoslav area, and led an anarchist army in Ukraine during the time of the People’s Republic.  There was utter chaos – the Red Army and the White Army were fighting each other, there were German and Austrian troops who hadn’t yet retreated, there was the Ukrainian People’s Army, and there were gangs of bandits.  Everyone’s accused everyone else of banditry.  And the people who came off worst in all of it were the Jews and the Mennonites.   Views of both Makhno and Pravda differ, but that the Mennonite settlements came under these horrific attacks is a fact.  However, the attacks mostly seem to have taken place in 1918 and 1919, so I’m not quite sure why the author’s got this one as being in 1917.  But anyway.

The Mennonite colony in the book, like those in the Chortitza area in real life, is attacked by bandits, who, all too similarly to Putin’s army today, murder many of the men still at home and rape many of the women.  They also, although the book doesn’t really show this, stole most of the grain stores, and manage to spread typhus all round the area.  A lot of the survivors subsequently emigrated to Canada, which is what Katya Vogt, the protagonist of this book, does.  We see her and other survivors trying to carry on, but finding life very difficult under the new communist regime.  And then, at the end, we see her as an elderly lady in Manitoba, having married another survivor and with many children and grandchildren.  We hear that a friend who remained was deported to Siberia during the Second World War: Stalin deported almost all the Chortitza Mennonites.   A few returned later, but most who survived either moved to cities or emigrated to Germany.  The old colonies, like the old Jewish shtetls, are either empty or else inhabited by other people who’ve moved there.

It’s not the most cheerful of books.  If you want a bit of light reading, this is not the book for you!  But it’s an interesting tale of a small group of people who were just trying to live in peace and fell victim to other people’s hatreds and conflicts.

 

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Beatrix: The Queen Who Gave Up The Crown – Channel 5

 

This is a very promising move from Channel 5.  We’ve had some excellent programmes on the recent history of the British Royal Family, but, whilst I understand that it was difficult to film new material during lockdown, there really is only so much you can say about the Abdication, the Margaret-Townsend affair and the War of the Waleses.  Some programmes about the Continental royal families would be extremely welcome.  The title of the programme was rather silly, because it made it sound as if Beatrix did something like Edward VIII did, rather than abdicating at the age of 75 after a 33-year reign, but the actual substance of the programme was very interesting.

The Netherlands is a fascinating country, because historically it’s very puritanical but also very liberal, and very tolerant but with strong extremist elements on several different sides, and we saw how Beatrix – and it was lovely to see her looking so well at the memorial service for Prince Philip – had to steer her way through that.  She met with protests on her wedding day, because she was marrying a German, and protests on the day of her investiture, because of concerns over the Dutch Royal Family’s wealth, and she also had to deal with her husband’s long battle with depression and the death of one of her sons.   She was initially seen as being very aloof, but later as being very warm – the ongoing conflict between a royal family retaining its mystique whilst at the same time being seen as relevant and accessible.  And she’s been a lot more outspoken about politics than most royals have been.

I do love the way that orange is the Dutch national colour,and that that’s because of the House of Orange-Nassau (er, even if Orange itself is actually in France).   I suppose that green’s the colour of the Republic of Ireland, but there isn’t a national colour of England or the UK, and it’d be nice if there was.  But never mind!

All in all, this was very good, and I’m hoping that we might see some more programmes about the Continental royals.   There’s certainly plenty of material to go at.

 

 

The Scapegoat by Daphne du Maurier

  Remember the ridiculous Krystle/Rita storyline in Dynasty?  If your child, sibling, partner or parent had been replaced by a lookalike, do you not think you’d notice the difference?  And Rita had at least been coached by Sammy Jo in Krystle’s history, the family history and Krystle’s mannerisms.  In this book, we are expected to believe that a British history professor is tricked into taking the place of a French count who drugged him a short time after they met by accident at a railway station, and that the count’s mother, wife, brother, sister and daughter all failed to realise that this wasn’t actually their guy, just someone who looked like him?  I mean, seriously??!!

The dog realised that it was the wrong guy.  So, eventually, did the guy’s mistress.  But no-one else did.  The said count had got his life in a mess.  The terms of his wife’s dowry were that the money would only be released if she either produced a male heir or died before the age of 50.  One daughter, one miscarriage, now expecting again but terrified that something would go wrong.  He was supplying his mother with morphine, his sister didn’t speak to him because he’d had her fiance murdered during the war, and his young daughter was having some sort of religious crisis.  Also, his finances were a mess and putting a lot of people’s livelihoods at risk.

Our friend, John, did his best to sort it out, but the wife committed suicide.  Meanwhile, Jean, the real count, was in London, helping himself to John’s money.

Why didn’t John just go to the police and say that he’d been drugged and kidnapped and he wasn’t actually Jean?!  Did he enjoy being caught up in this very messy life, just because his own was so boring?  And how on earth did even Jean’s closest relatives fail to notice that he was the wrong person?   Even if he genuinely looked very like Jean, he wouldn’t have sounded like him, and the fact that he knew nothing about Jean’s life must surely have been obvious.   The story of Jean’s family was interesting, but the idea that no-one would have realised that John wasn’t Jean was just too silly.

 

A Free Man on Sunday by Fay Sampson

We all know see that the title of this book comes from “The Manchester Rambler” by Ewan MacColl, right?   “I may be a wage slave on Monday, but I am a free man on Sunday.”  In addition to being a singer-songwriter from Lower Broughton, and the father of the late, great Kirsty MacColl, Ewan MacColl was one of the leaders of the Kinder Scout Mass Trespass, the 90th anniversary of which will be marked on Sunday, April 24th.  Anyone who’s ever felt trapped in a workplace, especially in a densely-populated urban area, and especially if they’ve ever suffered from mental health problems, will be able to identify with that feeling … and that’s partly why a group of mainly working-class people from Manchester and Sheffield, largely organised by Benny Rothman from Cheetham Hill (let me get the North Manchester bit in there!) campaigned so hard for walkers in England and Wales to be given access to the countryside.  As they put it, it was a “working class struggle for the right to roam versus the rights of the wealthy to have exclusive use of moorlands for grouse shooting”.

Opinions on the Kinder Scout Mass Trespass vary.  Some people think that it was a big turning point as regards public access to the countryside, and was what led to the creation of the Countryside Code and the National Parks.  Some people think that it wasn’t a big deal.  A lot of people admire the Trespassers, but some people from landowning backgrounds point out that trespassing is inappropriate – five of the trespassers were jailed for public order offences – and say that mass trespasses hindered the movement towards greater access.  I’m from North Manchester, OK.  My paternal grandfather was the same age as Benny Rothman and grew up in the same part of town as he did.  Maybe they even knew each other. In fact they may well have gone to the same primary school, maybe been in the same class.  I love North Manchester, but it’s a very built-up, densely populated area, and it’s extremely important for me to be able to get out into the countryside for some “green therapy”.  So I was always going to identify with the Trespassers:  I’m not going to pretend to be unbiased about any of this!

During lockdown, there were a lot of pictures in the papers of crowded public parks in Manchester and other cities, and tut-tutting about the number of people there.  Well, that was because we weren’t allowed out of our local areas and, wonderful as our parks are, there are a lot of us living near them.  For the number of people, we don’t have a lot of green space.  And we need it, especially during tough times – and 1932, in the middle of the Depression, was a very tough time, just as lockdown was.  We need access to the countryside.  Thank you again to all those who helped to win it for us.

And I was hoping to be able to say that I loved this book.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t very good.  But it tried.

It’s a children’s book.  It says that it’s aimed at children aged between 10 and 13.  Our heroine is Edie Ramsden, who lives in a fictional town called “Oldway”.  I tried to work out where it was meant to be, but I couldn’t.  The surnames are all very Lancastrian, and yet there’s a mention of someone having worked at the Yorkshire Evening Post, and there’s also reference to the best-known climbers in Derbyshire and being on the other side of “the county”, so maybe the author was trying to show that this was a joint effort.  Or maybe the author, who comes from Devon, doesn’t actually know that much about Northern England, and I’m totally overthinking things!  TBH, that’s probably accurate.  Everyone works in a cotton mill and goes to chapel.  I was just waiting for the cloth caps and whippets.  Oh, and apparently they can see both Kinder Scout and the Mersey from Oldway, which is, er, interesting.  It really does read like a book written by a Southerner!   But never mind.

Edie’s dad is very involved with rambling, but they are a chapel-going family, and her mum and their friends are rather shocked by the idea both of rambling on a Sunday and of the involvement of the Young Communists in the rambling/trespassing movement.  That’s obviously a perfectly valid viewpoint, but I found it a bit odd.  The whole point of being “A Free Man on Sunday” (and the author does acknowledge that the song hadn’t actually been written at the time of the Kinder Scout Mass Trespass) is that you can do what you want on a Sunday.  Sabbatarianism doesn’t really mesh with that, other than not actually doing your job of work.  A lot of the people involved were communists, and or Jewish, and the others presumably weren’t bothered about either attending Sunday morning services or strict Sunday observance in general, or they wouldn’t have been going on long Sunday rambles.  I’m not quite sure why the author chose to bring Methodist sabbatarianism into it.  I’m not criticising it, I just don’t really think it fits with the main plotline, i.e. the Kinder Scout Mass Trespass.

OK, enough moaning.  On the positive side, the book makes a big effort to emphasise how important access to the land is to working-class people.  And it points out that a lot of the ramblers were women: it wasn’t just a male thing.  It also makes the point – and this is something which came up a lot in 2020 and 2021, with so many people “staycationing” – that visitors to the countryside need to respect it.  It doesn’t belong to anyone: it belongs to everyone.  No swinging on gates and possibly breaking them.  And, although the book didn’t mention either of these issues, no dropping litter and no letting horrible dogs attack sheep.  But it also shows that the Trespassers were treated very harshly by gamekeepers.

Edie’s dad goes off to join the Trespass.  Edie decides to follow him.  She has a problem with the wheel of her bike.  Two men stop to help her – and they’re none other than Benny Rothman and his mate Wolfie Winnick.  They all reach the top of Kinder Scout … and Edie’s dad is one of those arrested.  The book ends with him being one of those jailed for public order offences, and Edie dreaming of the day that he’s free again and they’re all free to climb Kinder Scout.

It wasn’t the greatest of books, as I’ve said, but very few books do address this important event in the history of the British countryside, so I’m grateful to Fay Sampson for doing so.   Thank you to her, but, most of all, thank you again to all of those who fought for the right of the public in England and Wales to enjoy the countryside.   It’s a very important right, and may it never be taken away.

Toby at Tibbs Cross by Dorita Fairlie Bruce

This book sees Toby, the heroine of The School on the Moor, working as a Land Girl (well, sort of) in 1940.   There are surprisingly few books showing Girls’ Own heroines doing war work, so this one is very welcome.  Toby isn’t with the official Land Army, but is effectively doing the work of a land girl on a farm owned by Charity Sheringham, who features in some of DFB’s other books.  There’s quite a bit of information about farming, but not so much as to be boring, and love interests for both girls, so that all works rather well.

However … in keeping with the the Raiders of the Lost Ark storyline in The School on the Moor, Toby soon finds that a disease killing local farm animals, and which nearly kills her dog – which, incidentally, is referred to as “Master Algy” by Charity’s maid – is being caused by the local vet, who is in the pay of the Nazis and is injecting all the animals with poison.  Right.  And the only person who is able to save the animals is a gipsy horse doctor.   It turns out that, whaddaya know, the gipsy horse doctor is none other than Toby’s admirer in disguise, trying to catch the baddie vet out.

Meanwhile, Charity’s beau has gone missing during the Dunkirk evacuation, but he returns in a German plane, which he was able to nick as its pilots had left it unattended whilst they went to the pub.  As you do.

There’s a dramatic conclusion in which Toby’s admirer is beaten up by the baddie vet, leaving Toby to do the catching and apprehending … and a very sad sub-plot which sees the vet’s disabled niece die.   Both couples get engaged, and presumably live happily ever after – the two men being exempt from further military/police service due to the importance of their farming.

I think it’s important to remember that this was intended as a children’s book.  A lot of children’s books written during both world wars feature spy stories and derring-do, and young readers would probably find a book which was just about farming and romance rather boring.  So, although it seemed rather OTT, it was probably right for the audience for which it was written – and the actual writing was very good.  Now I just need to get hold of the middle book in the “Toby” trilogy!

Pilgrimage: the road to the Scottish Isles – BBC 2

 

Whatever your personal religious or spiritual beliefs, there’s something very special about travelling to a place which holds significance for you, especially if you’re fortunate enough to have the health and time to make that journey on foot. Well, mostly on foot: this year’s pilgrimage takes in parts of the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland, so, as the land bridge between Scotland and Northern Ireland has never got past the vague discussions stage, some of it will obviously *not* be made on foot.  Anyway, boats, buses, feet, whatever, it’s good to see the BBC 2 Pilgrimage programme back, after a year’s break due to the pandemic.

This year, our pilgrims are sticking close to home – heading for the Scottish holy island of Iona, home of Iona Abbey, founded by St Columba in the 6h century AD. BTW, why are some saints’ names in common usage but others aren’t.   How many people do you know who are called George, Andrew or David?   Now, how many people do you know who are called Columba, Ninian or Bede?   Hmm.

Unlike the previous Pilgrimage programmes, this one isn’t following a traditional pilgrimage route.  There is no Camino de St Columba.  Instead, they’re visiting various sites associated with Columba’s life.  Er, using navigation apps on their phones.  And, presumably in the interests of inclusivity – that’s a comment, not a criticism – the emphasis is being put on each participant’s personal “religious journey”.

Incidentally, I always say that I’m a Victorian, but, when it comes to “spiritual” issues, I’m actually very medieval – I look for omens in anything and everything.  The Victorians would have been horrified by that!

An interesting point was made, by Scarlett Moffatt, about religious people being seen as uncool.  I remember there being quite a bit of discussion on this subject in terms of soap opera characters, some years ago.  It was pointed out that the religious characters in soap operas were always old ladies, notably Emily Bishop in Coronation Street, Dot Cotton in EastEnders and Edna Birch in Emmerdale.  Not that old ladies are uncool, but you get the idea.  And I think the scriptwriters took the point, because we suddenly started to get religious teenagers – Sophie Webster in Coronation Street, Bobby Beale in EastEnders and Amelia Spencer in Emmerdale.  Even so, if you were asked to pick which one of the group most identified with formal religion, you probably wouldn’t have picked the young reality TV star.  Just a thought!

We also, with the group visiting Derry/Londonderry, heard quite a bit about the Troubles and the efforts that have been made to bring different religious communities together, including an interview with a lady whose husband was murdered by the IRA, and who now works for peace and reconciliation in tandem with a lady who was formerly a member of the IRA.

That had nothing to do with St Columba, but it had a lot to do with our lives today.   This is an unusual year: it’s quite common for Passover and Easter to coincide, but it’s unusual for Passover, Easter and Ramadan all to coincide, which is happening this year.  Both Easters – Good Friday by the Gregorian calendar coincides with the first day of Passover, Good Friday by the Julian calendar coincides with the penultimate day of Passover, and Ramadan runs through all of it.   I know that there are fears that this could lead to a wave of violence in the Middle East, but hopefully it won’t, and anyone marking any of these festivals (OK, I know that Ramadan isn’t a festival as such,  but I couldn’t think of an appropriate noun to include all three!), or just enjoying the long weekend, will be able to do so in peace … and make the most of it, after two successive springs mucked up by Covid.  If anyone’s read this, thank you, and all the best.

Gentleman Jack (series 2) – BBC 1

 

Hooray!   Finally, we’re back to having some decent “period drama” to watch on a Sunday evening.  Other than sport, Sunday evening TV has been dire for weeks.  So welcome back, Anne Lister and Ann Walker, and Shibden Hall.

This must be an extremely demanding role for Suranne Jones, because Anne Lister is in practically every scene.  And she spends half those scenes striding about very energetically, in between corresponding with her ex, dealing with her business affairs, managing her household, catching up with her relatives, dealing with Ann’s relatives and actually spending some time with Ann!

Even when she’s taking time out from all of that, she’s addressing the viewer.  That’s a reminder that this is an adaptation of Anne Lister’s diaries – and another result of that is that some of the other characters sometimes seem a bit caricatured, because we’re seeing them through Anne’s eyes, not in a more balanced, rounded way.  Having said that, a lot of Dickensian characters and even some of Austen’s characters are deliberately caricatured, so it’s something that doesn’t seem out of place in a drama set in the 19th century.

It would have been nice to see more about Ann Walker, though.  Anne Lister seemed to be very comfortable in her own skin, even if other people weren’t always very comfortable with her personality and behaviour, but Ann Walker suffered badly from depression and anxiety.   It’s thought that that was partly because, unlike Anne Lister, she found it a struggle to reconcile her faith and her sexuality, and that’s something which it might have been interesting for the series to explore, especially with all the talk at the moment about the upset caused by conversion therapy.

However, it’s just great to have a decent period drama in the Sunday 9pm slot again, at last, and particularly great that it’s a northern drama – OK, it’s Yorkshire and not Lancashire or the Lakes 🙂 , but Rievaulx Abbey looked mighty fine in the scenes set there, and it’s always good to see the hard-working, world-leading 19th century industrial north on screen – and that it’s female-led.   And there’ve even been stories of people saying that the first series helped them to accept themselves.  No-one’s even making a huge big deal of the fact that this is a series about a same sex relationship: the comments mainly seem to be about Anne’s constant striding (she really does do a lot of striding!) and the locations used for filming.

It’s not exactly relaxing watching, because Anne is on the go practically all the time!   Even the Rievaulx Abbey sketching party scene was a bit hectic, because Anne was striding about whilst the others were sketching!   But I wasn’t bored for a single moment, and nothing about it was unconvincing either.  A really good hour’s TV.  Welcome back, Gentleman Jack!

Thatcher and Reagan: A Very Special Relationship – BBC 2

Those of us who grew up in the 1980s saw the likes of Mikhail Gorbachev (who comes from a village near the Russo-Ukrainian border, brought glasnost to the old USSR and must be absolutely devastated at what’s going on at the moment), Nelson Mandela, Vaclav Havel and Lech Walesa bestriding the world stage (I like that expression).  Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and to some extent Helmut Kohl were also part of that.

Going back into history, you find, to name but a few, Churchill, Disraeli, Gladstone, Bismarck, Metternich, Louis XIV, Elizabeth I, Charles the Bold, Henry V, Saladin, William the Conqueror, Harald Hardrada, Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great … on and on and on.  Where are all the world leaders now?!   That new German Chancellor’s so anonymous that I can only remember his name because it makes me think of the snowman in Frozen, and the rest of them aren’t much better.   And how is banning Russian players from Wimbledon supposed to help anyone?  Maybe that’s why everyone’s so into Zelenskyy, because he actually *has* got something about him.

Anyway.  Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were obviously both quite controversial figures at home, but this programme wasn’t about that; and I was impressed that the BBC, which often seems to forget that it’s supposed to be politically neutral, respected that – and focused on the relationship between the two, which was what it said on the tin.

We even got some Freudian-type stuff about how Ronald liked Maggie because strong women reminded him on his mother, and how Maggie liked Ronald because she was keen on glamorous, powerful men.  That does rather make one wonder how she ended up with Denis, who was many things but certainly not glamorous, but never mind.

It’s rather frightening how dated the video shots from the ’80s and early ’90s look now, but I’m trying not to think about that.  I’m still trying to process the fact that the Miami Open was won by someone who was born in 2003, and that the defeated finalist was someone whose dad I remember as a young teenage pro.  And how on earth is Brooklyn Beckham old enough to get married, when surely it was only five minutes ago that he was an adorable toddler kicking a ball round the pitch at Old Trafford after we won the league in, er, the year 2000?  Oh, and, speaking of the ’80s and early ’90s, remember the Berlin Wall coming in November 1989, Nelson Mandela being released from prison in February 1990, and those precious few months of thinking that we’d finally reached an age of peace?   It all went kaput when Iraq invaded Kuwait in July 1990, before The Scorpions had even released “Wind of Change”, but it was nice whilst it lasted.

This first episode really was quite interesting, because there was so much about that personal bond and what helped them to form it, and how Mrs Thatcher (as she was then) coped with being a woman in a man’s world.  I’m not sure that we needed quite so much psycho-analysis about the significance of her handbag, though.  Why are people so obsessed with the Queen’s handbag and Maggie Thatcher’s handbag?!   They should see the contents of mine – talk about everything but the kitchen sink.

I wish we could get back to a point where Anglo-American relations are as close as they were then, but we don’t seem to have had another pair of leaders who’ve got on so well.  Blair and Clinton, to some extent, but both of them were very narcissistic and I don’t think that they worked together anything like as well as Thatcher and Reagan did.

Also, even with the Gulf Wars, there wasn’t the sense of the common enemy that there was in the days of the Cold War.  I never really got the Cold War, TBH.  OK, it was coming to an end by the time I was old enough to understand much about it, but I think it was because people were always talking about “the Russians”, rather than “the communists” of “the Soviets”.  I like Russia.  Not easy then and not easy at the moment, but all that Russians-as-baddies stuff has never worked for me.  But it did for Thatcher and Reagan … until Gorbachev came along, and we’ll hear more about that next week.

A lot of this was about the issue of American nuclear weapons being based in Britain, and in Western Europe, and how Thatcher and Reagan worked very closely together on that, but we also saw them having their differences over trade issues, and over the lack of overt  American support for Britain during the Falklands War.

All in all, I thought it was very well-presented.  Too many BBC programmes these days take a very biased political viewpoint, and or try to make the issues of the past about the issues of today, like that ridiculous programme in 2017 which tried to make out that the Reformation was somehow linked to Brexit, or that Simon Schama programme which tried to link William Blake to Darth Vader.  This one did what it was meant to do, and it did it rather well.

 

80s Kid by Melanie Ashfield

 

Mum and dad born at the end of the Second World War, two kids born in the mid-1970s, grandparents who made it through the Depression and the war and now hoped to enjoy their retirement in a bit of comfort which they never had when they were younger, living in the suburb of a big city.  Yep, that was us, and that was also the Ashfield family – although, in their case, the city was Birmingham.  This is only a short book, but it’s a wonderful exercise in nostalgia.  I read the entire book very quickly, nodding and laughing and saying “Oh yes”!   Especially when the author said that she herself, as a child, was always very interested in “the olden days”, because she was always busily reading about them in Enid Blyton books.

Did you collect Panini football stickers and smelly rubbers?  Wear a Fergie bow in your hair?  Tape the Top 40 off Radio 1 on a Sunday night?  Learn things from Judy Blume’s Forever and the Just Seventeen problem page which you never learnt anywhere else?   Yep, that was me, and that was also the author of this book.  It really did give me a good laugh!

It’s subtitled “A memoir of growing up in the last decade before technology took over” – and, yes, that’s true.  All right, I’m not saying that, when we were kids, we were out roaming the great outdoors, eating macaroons and drinking ginger beer, but we certainly didn’t have mobile phones, we only had basic computer games, and a Walkman was the height of sophistication!  But, as the book says, any sort of new gadget was very exciting, and people thought they were really something if they got one for their home.  The author devotes most of a chapter to the family’s first microwave.  I have no idea why I remember this, but we got our first microwave on the weekend that Tom Watson won the British Open.  So it must have been either 1982 or 1983, because he won it in both years.  And the fact that I remember that just shows what a big deal it was when your family got their first microwave!

And, as the author says, grandmas and great-aunts were not overly impressed with microwaves.  They liked to cook things properly.  Specific reference is made to lemon meringue pies.  Oh yes.  My maternal grandma was always making lemon meringue pies.  People who were not so devoted to cooking, on the other hand, served up Angel Delight.   We used to get this at primary school.  It was always the chocolate flavour.  Someone nicknamed it “mud pud”, and the name stuck.  The author writes at length about how utterly vile primary school dinners were in the 1980s.   They were indeed.

I was more interested in the primary school nostalgia than the secondary school nostalgia, probably because I was a very shy and boring teenager but, as our primary school was so small, everyone there was part of the in crowd.   She talks about it being a big deal when one black kid arrived at the school, but I have to say that that didn’t resonate with me, because my primary school was always very multi-ethnic.  Other things did resonate with me, though.  Having to go to school even in the bleak midwinter.  If you slipped in the snow, hard luck!   And picking up the litter in the playground being regarded as a mark of high status rather than as a punishment.  I’d completely forgotten about that, but it was true!   There was a girl in the year below me called Claire, and Claire was obsessed with being one of the people chosen to pick up the litter in the playground!   I was never that keen on it myself, but I’d never have got a look in anyway, because Claire and her mates were always in there first, so excited about getting to pick up crisp packets left lying on the ground.  I mean, why??

And the collections.  Rubbers.  We had two huge sweet jars full of rubbers.  Being a rather anal kid obsessed with record-keeping, I kept a list of rubbers, and every new rubber which my sister and I acquired was entered on to the list.  I am not making this up.  Panini football stickers, of course.   Care Bears.  And My Little Ponies.  We even had a My Little Pony game at our primary school.  Girls only.  Each girl was assigned the name of one of the ponies.  I was Applejack.  My sister was Seashell.  My then best friend was Bubbles.  No, I have no idea why I remember this, either.

Dads and grandads, meanwhile, dreamed of winning the pools.  The author writes quite a bit of this.  Our pools man came once a week, to collect the money.  My dad put on the same numbers every week, and, to this day, I can still remember most of them.  My maternal grandad, meanwhile, always talked about how, when he won the pools, he was going to buy two racehorses.  He’d even chosen names for them.  Needless to say, he never did win the pools.  Nor did anyone in the author’s family.  But we had our dreams!

Another chapter is devoted to Wimpy parties.  Now, I don’t remember ever going to a Wimpy party, but Wimpy parties and McDonald’s parties were much the same thing, and McDonald’s parties were really big round our way in around 1984.  I had one myself.  You and your friends all went to the local McDonald’s, and the staff even organised games for you.  And it meant that your mum was not left with a load of mess to  clear up at home.   So cool!  *So* cool!

Less cool were those mental arithmetic tests with which some teachers were obsessed.  I’m so glad to learn that this didn’t just happen at our school!   Our headmistress used to yell “Right, mental arithmetic test, number down 1 to 100,” and then fire questions at us so quickly that you were usually still trying to work out the answer to question 1 when she was on to question 3.  These days, it’s probably all computerised.

There were all sorts of other bits, too.  Mr Frosty machines.  Monogrammed hankies!   Fergie bows.  Watching Bullseye.   And then all the things you did at secondary school.  As I said, I didn’t get as much from this, because I was a bit of a saddo at secondary school, but plenty of it was still very familiar.  Fake IDs.  I’m not sure how it worked elsewhere, but, in Manchester, there were under 16 bus passes and 16-19 bus passes.  Kids aged 13, 14 and 15 would photocopy their birth certificates, change the date with Tippex to make it look as if they were 18, photocopy the copy, and then get a 16-19 bus pass.  The staff at the bus station shops must have known jolly well that the said kids were nowhere near 18, but I don’t remember anyone ever being questioned about it.

Forever, by Judy Blume.  Yes, we all read that.  To this day, I find it very hard not to snigger if I meet anyone called Ralph.  There are very few people under 50 called Ralph, despite the fact that it was the name of the hero of The Thorn Birds.  I think Judy Blume killed the name off.  The Just Seventeen problem page.  The constant fad diets – generally tried by mums and aunties.

And, according to the author, a lot of girls wanted to be models.  Now, I remember Aveline in Bread and Georgina in Grange Hill both wanting to be models, but I think that that particular trend must have passed my school by.  OK, a fat kid like me was never going to aspire to be a model anyway, but I don’t remember any of the pretty girls being interested in modelling either!

Taping the Top 40 off the radio, though – now that was something which we definitely did.  The snag was that, unless you had a fancy combined radio and cassette thing, those old cassette players recorded everything, and you could guarantee that a parent or sibling would barge into your room and start talking just as your favourite song came on!  Video rental shops were a big thing too.  My then best friend’s parents actually owned a video rental shop, so we got the pick of all the newest videos.  And hanging around in town on Saturday mornings.  I think calling the city centre “town” is a specifically Mancunian thing, and the author just talked about hanging around in the city centre, but, yes, everyone did that!   These days, people go into town to have a drink and something to eat, but, back then, there weren’t anything like the number of eating places that there are now.  And we didn’t go shopping.  We just hung around.

I suppose everyone thinks that the decade in which they grew up was something special.  It’s where you get your soundtrack from, as well.  I can hear a song from 1989 and know exactly when it was from, and what was going on in my life at that time.  With songs which were released later than … probably 1995, the year I graduated from university, I just haven’t got that.  I rarely listen to any music from any time later than the mid-1990s.  Because the time when you grow up’s special.  We’ll always be 80s kids.

Loved this book!   Really, really loved it!

 

The Swallows’ Flight by Hilary McKay

This is a companion novel to The Skylarks’ War, but could also be read as a stand-alone book.  It’s written for young children, and isn’t even as deep as The Skylarks’ War is, but it’s not bad.  It’s set just before and during the Second World War, and there are two sets of main characters – Clarry’s goddaughters Kate (daughter of Vanessa and Peter) and Ruby, and two German boys who become Luftwaffe pilots, Erik and Hans.   Clarry and Rupert also feature.  And there’s a grandfather.  And a dog.

It’s nice to read a book featuring evacuees who actually *aren’t* from London: Ruby is evacuated from Plymouth.  Three cheers for the scriptrwriters of the new Railway Children film – the evacuees in the said film are from Salford.  Ruby and Kate, although from different backgrounds, end up becoming best friends, and their world collides with the world of the two German lads when, somewhat unconvincingly, both German lads crash-land in the English countryside and meet up with the girls.

The book tries to show that not all Germans are Nazis and that Erik and Hans don’t want to be fighting for the Third Reich.  It also touches on the Holocaust, although not particularly convincingly, and I found it odd that Hilary McKay said that that wasn’t her story to tell because she wasn’t Jewish.  It’s everyone’s story to tell, surely?

All in all, I didn’t think that it was as good as the first book, but it wasn’t bad, and the first book was so popular that I’m sure that this’ll have plenty of readers.