Gertsamtkunstwerk

Murder on the Links - Agatha Christie

I have read a lot of books in the past 21 months, and posted reviews of them to GoodReads. Which is daft, because my blog should be the prime place for my writing.

Like most people I have seen  many dramatisations of Agatha Christie on the TV, which is perhaps why I didn't read her books. I read some Dorothy L Sayers when young but never Agatha. Perhaps I felt I would read them when I became old.

She wrote about 60 books; assuming I live another 30 years, I'd have to read at least two a year. Not overly ambitious. Daft not to. I currently find crime fiction to be my preferred genre. The best tells us more about society and human nature  than any other genre. The not-so-good is still reasonably entertaining.

Separately, I'm developing my interest in 1920s/1930s history. I'll no doubt write more about this in due course. The political history is interesting and important, but the more I think about it, the more I feel that the end of the First World War was the start of the current era. From urban development to motoring, to some small level of female emancipation to relative prosperity for the middle classes (albeit amidst the poverty for those in industrial areas already bring run down by globalisation). No, no, this is too simplistic. And that is the fascination of that period, Prosperity and the Great Depression, an amazing art form, Art Deco - not actually coined until the 60s but now universally understood - and fascism. Contradictions.

I've not actually seen many of the TV episodes of Poirot. Life getting in the way of TV (Marple was different, being shown mainly at Christmas). But I have seen this one and didn't think much of it. And, I have to say, I don't think much of the book, either.

Agatha Christie is the world's best ever selling novelist. There comes a point with 'great' or 'popular' where it looks stupid to criticise them, at least in generality. For a start, nobody wants to know. So I draft my criticism of this book carefully. 

It was her third, and her second Poirot. Looking at GoodReads, I'm struck by how many readers say, having read many more of hers, this really isn't the best. I'm encouraged by this, because I found it less than memorable. I wonder, if I had read it in 1923, would I have persevered with further publications? Fear of missing out is a bad reason to read a book. On the other hand, it's worth listening to the voices of experience, a luxury we have today in respect of Agatha Christie.

No point me regurgitating the plot - don't you hate it when reviewers do this! But, you know, there were murders.

I don't especially like the character of Hastings. From the distance of over 90 years, he seems like a caricature of a stereotype of the posh but dim type. Clever enough to fit in into his social echelon, and competent at knowing facts and so on. But never trained to think analytically or laterally, a great failing of many British men, and not only of that era. I enjoy Hugh Fraser's portrayal on the TV, playing him absolutely straight as an upper-middle class man educated beyond his intelligence.

More particularly I don't like the structure she adopts in this book. I believe it doesn't feature in most of them - of Hastings narrating a tale. What this boils down to is lots of reported speech - or Hastings telling us what Poirot told him. It gets a bit tedious and makes Poirot seem several steps removed. It also means a lot of dialogue. I think, but can't be sure, that books of this era featured a great deal more dialogue than those of our era. But nowadays, great advice on writing is 'show not tell', and this has Poirot doing a great deal of telling.

Series have the advantage of being able to show character development gradually over time, and a reader coming to this in 1923 would be learning about Poirot. I think we 'all' know a great deal about Poirot now. And i suspect that he will be forever David Suchet's interpretation - which is brilliant and inimitable. But it does mean that I, as a middle-aged woman in 2016, am coming to this book with preconceptions which would not have existed for my equivalent in the inter-war years. 

I'm currently working my way through ITV's dramatisations - I've just finished Series 1. Above all, and notwithstanding the brilliance of Agatha Christie and David Suchet, I love most of all the visual art. Some lingering camera shots just for their aesthetic value. Use of period buildings and cars, and the exquisite interiors. I even like that the clothes are not high fashion but have convinced me that they are what prosperous people wore then.

To conclude, not a great book, but one that needs to be read in my attempt to read all of Agatha christie over my remaining decades.

Pyrford and the River Wey

This was another walk suggested by the AA and one I think I would recommend. Pyrford lies just off the A3, using the same junction one uses for Wisley, which I blogged about last year. I like the A3, even though it gets congested in the parts near to me - Clapham, Battersea, Wandsworth and into Putney. But as it progresses through the outer suburbs, Kingston by-pass and out into Surrey becoming a motorway-standard trunk road, it retains a whiff of romance, some evocation of the interwar years when the road network was being improved and motoring was everybody's dream and many people's pleasure.

I love the 1930s architecture, mundane though most of it is, that we pass, even though I could write long essays about how damaging these roads are, ploughing their way through residential areas, and that now all urban planning seems to revolve around the motor car, and that's before I even touch on pollution. But there's a stage in the journey, around New Malden and Tolworth where in my imagination I'm back in that Golden Age of Motoring. 

Pyrford is only just outside London, but very much in Surrey, a suburb of Woking. It's a highly desirable area to live, with house prices that reflect that. But it's free to visit! 

As deserted rural churches go, St Nicholas was pretty interesting. Mainly because it dates from 1140 and has frescos also from about that age, which were uncovered relatively recently.

     

Nice little churchyard, too. I've developed a habit of taking photos of War Memorials in most villages I visit.

 

There was a larger graveyard across the road, with the graves tended by a woman, in what struck me as an act of futility. Probably most of the relatives don't specifically request it, and I suspect that the time spent on the dead is time not spent on the living. Will anyone miss her and tend her grave when she is gone? Not that it's any concern of mine of course!

Our walk took us across fields and through a small wood. Sun beating down, leeks growing, electricity pylons and lines strung across the fields. And no one to be seen.

 

Despite the path being well way-marked by Surrey County Council we took a wrong turn from our AA route and started walking in the wrong direction through an opulent residential development. We almost bumped into some other human beings but when they saw us coming they hurried into their driveway. An odd area, deserted and zombified. There's actually a lot of history around Pyrford but their village website, pleasantly boastful in a likeable small town way, tells of how they have deliberately and systematically destroyed their historic village - the village green is now incorporated in a golf course. 

The footpath crosses - and pre-dates - the golf course, but the waymarking signs have been vandalised. An ugly place, a desecration of nature - mown grass, no flowers or productive plants. Trees planted under sufferance in a straight line, and the path through a small copse is criminally neglected. It takes you onto a footway-less road called Lock Lane, rather than the logical destination, Pyrford Lock. And all this for all of six people!

We ate lunch in the beer garden of The Anchor Pub at Pyrford Lock. Very pleasant. The fish and chips were decent enough, but that interlude beside the river is how you imagine lazy sunny days to be. Maybe you want to spend more time in riverside pubs on sunny days but, in the end, you don't because everyone else has the same idea and they're often too packed. But this was nice.

 

We walked along the river, which is a lot more difficult after a big plate of fish and chips and a pint of cider! Relatively little river traffic and many boats moored. Too many of them looking as if they  haven't been used in a long while. Do people buy boats and just abandon them when the novelty wears off?

 

We passed a house with its own riverside access, with landing and mooring. That's something I've always quite fancied in a passive way ie not really, but it sparkles the imagination.

 

Onto the next lock, Walsham Gates, which was really quite lovely. At this point in my life (little over a year ago) I didn't know how locks were constructed. I now know that locks are generally accompanied by a weir, to enable the water levels to be managed.

    

We were passed on the towpath by several serious cyclists. I only realised later that Pyrford was on the route of the Olympic road race in 2012, but I don't recall them going along the towpath! An elderly woman was sitting reading on a folding chair on the riverbank next to her moored-up narrowboat. Other than them, barely a soul. I did realise our walk was coming to an end when I spotted casual strollers, proof we were barely 100 metres from the car park. A man in normal clothes leaning on his bike on the riverbank, drinking from a can of lager, a family group including 70ish grandma, a toddler and a dog.

The remaining stretch of the river might qualify for my 'happy place'. Perhaps it was a trick of the sunlight, reflecting on the yellow fields. Perhaps because there were several elements that contributed to an English idyll: riverbanks not reinforced against flooding, meadows, a lone kayaker silently gliding by, geese in a field and a ruined Priory. We all know, at least vaguely, how the monasteries were sacked by Henry VIII. Perhaps stranger is how the ruins have been left slowly disintegrating but by no means destroyed for 450 years.

       

 

 

A day out in Dorney

It was supposed to be so simple - follow the AA's instructions and have a gentle partly-riverside walk not far from London. A vague recollection in the area of the Slough parishes I audited half a lifetime ago, and a distant view of Windsor castle. An accidental trip the into the neighbouring Berkshire village of Eton Wick before we sussed out where the car park is - hidden, difficult to find, not well-used, and free!

It was almost the epitome of a lovely English summer's day as we crossed Dorney Common. Blue skies, fluffy white clouds, warm but not uncomfortably hot. Not as beautiful as the commons local to me but picturesque in a bleak way. Some of the houses near the common were worth a second glance.

 

    

Going into the village pub was a mistake. In hindsight, it wasn't entirely their fault, for reasons that will become apparent. The place was absolutely heaving and chaotic, understaffed and with no apparent system - and it was an hour from arrival to when we got our food, which wasn't really worth the wait, to be honest, rather overpriced for indifferent grub, eatable but bland.

However, in their defence, there was an event nearby, call the Colour Obstacle Rush. Apparently, you run a short distance and get powder paint thrown over you, which, apparently, is a great day out. Okay, I can see the attraction, sort of, but it was very badly organised. As far as I could tell, they had suggested that participants go to the pub for food but had forgot to tell the pub to expect them.

We followed a sign to a "12th century church" but I think it was probably 17th century, at the earliest, built on a previously used site.

 

From there, following the AA instructions we walked up to Eton Dorney lake, in order to gain access to the Thames Path. But access was blocked, by the Colour Obstacle Rush. It seemed a truly ghastly event - low rent formulaic dance music blaring out at ear bleeding volume, a paltry selection of dismal stalls, and a huge number of people, clearly non-participants, just hanging around. Oh and a snotty scraggy steward, who was very rude when she officiously informed us that access to the river was closed. Oh thank you for your ever-so-helpful but non-existent signs on the main road. But, apparently, we could walk down the lake and access the river from there. But, she added, it's two kilometres and the look on her face was 'but I doubt you're up to that unlike my bunch of jogsters'. One of those sad bitches who's 'into' sport but isn't any good at it, so hangs around organising 'events' and insulting people who aren't interested in her particular inane activity.

I tell you, Eton Dorney lake is the most boring 2 km imaginable. A taxpayer gift to the hugely over-privileged boys of Eton College, used for just a few days for the Olympics, desecrating the countryside, and blocking access to the Thames Path. We trogged along the path behind some sad specimens of humanity eg two blokes who had brought their toddler out and said toddler was now fractious. Who seriously thinks that low rent loud dance music is a great day out for a toddler?

 

God, that walk was boring. I wouldn't have minded if there had been some rowing action taking place, no such luck. No wildlife around the lake just managed grass and concrete. I did see two ducks but they were obviously lost. So boring. I cannot emphasise how boring that was. Really really really boring. 

Eventually, after what seemed like several days' hard trudging, we reached the top of Lake Boring. If we had known from the start that we couldn't have accessed the Thames Path near the village we would have walked there and back from this point, which was just yards from where we parked the car. But I calculated that 'there and back' would be another 6km at least, I really couldn't be bothered.

Instead we walked down to Boveney Lock and sat there a while. A busy lock, controlled by a lock keeper, and with boats queuing to enter from each side, able to take four boats at a time. On a hot Sunday afternoon in June, there is no shortage of entertainment at a lock. They take time to get through, might as well relax, put the kettle on even.

When people have come from the higher part of the river, they hop out of the boat onto the lockside. The water level falls, the boat sinks down the lock, and the people realise they have quite a long jump, onto a boat that isn't securely rooted!

Not in my nature to laugh, not at all - rather them than me, though!

Between the lock and the car park was a little chapel. I'm not into religion at all, but regard churches as a useful repository of social history, usually the only accessible one in most locations. So I was interested in the Chapel of St Mary Magdalene, and that it served the bargemen and other river workers when there was a wharf nearby (can't be having that sort in the standard village church, what). I noticed a sign advertising The Friends of Friendless Churches. I'm not sure what to think. The country is over-provided with churches, and the need to preserve them in aspic hinders progress. But not all progress is positive, and I'm not sure which historic, medieval churches I would propose to demolish.

Before lunch

 

and after, along Lake Boring