Oh my heavens, that first footnote at the end! My jaw dropped. So many things one thinks of as wholly original turn out to have a source of some kind, and each one comes as a shock, somehow. Loved this whole piece, and might read the columns collections now. Have been enjoying Ian Richardson's A Country Diary on Substack, which feels a little related.
There’s something about the country diary format, I think, that encourages a chasteness, a lyrical intensity, that can, on occasion, move the prose beyond observation and description towards something else. I love these March entries.
Chasteness and intensity is right, I think: not trying to do much beyond setting down the scene, but at the same time doing it in note form, which tends to a poetic compression. And Bell, I assume, wrote to the same word count week in, week out, which in its own way becomes a kind of fixed form.
Thank you, Jeremy, for this. First, it seems crosswords were much denser in those days, hardly any blank spaces at all. Or was it just this particular compiler's m.d.
I also like the 'slow bars of light and shadow', another form of 'disparate experience'? Which perhaps only hit us after unconscious repetition, much like the repeated words you mention and the echoing sounds of 'shadow' and 'tide'.
Yes, that struck me about the crossword. And also the lack of letter counts after the clues, which makes multiple word answers much harder. I like 'slow bars of light and shadow' very much -- when I decided to use it as the title of this post, I also noticed how it obliquely describes the look of a blank crossword grid...
I hadn't thought about the dark and light, blank and cancelled, in a crossword, so thank you for this too. Something to mull over. Like the current crossword which is giving me grief, and it's not even cryptic.
How heartening it is to lean on the gate and watch your plough shining down the sillions with no sense of the plod entailed! And the field looks all the better for it. Many thanks indeed.
Oh my heavens, that first footnote at the end! My jaw dropped. So many things one thinks of as wholly original turn out to have a source of some kind, and each one comes as a shock, somehow. Loved this whole piece, and might read the columns collections now. Have been enjoying Ian Richardson's A Country Diary on Substack, which feels a little related.
Glad you are reading Iain's posts! He is a colleague at UEA, so the world he describes is only a few miles from me in the city...
Just followed the link to the extract — will definitely read the collection. Thank you.
Thank you for this post - absolutely fascinating insight.
Thanks, Richard! I’m glad you saw this post — your editions of A Countryman’s Notebook are invaluable.
There’s something about the country diary format, I think, that encourages a chasteness, a lyrical intensity, that can, on occasion, move the prose beyond observation and description towards something else. I love these March entries.
Chasteness and intensity is right, I think: not trying to do much beyond setting down the scene, but at the same time doing it in note form, which tends to a poetic compression. And Bell, I assume, wrote to the same word count week in, week out, which in its own way becomes a kind of fixed form.
Thank you, Jeremy, for this. First, it seems crosswords were much denser in those days, hardly any blank spaces at all. Or was it just this particular compiler's m.d.
I also like the 'slow bars of light and shadow', another form of 'disparate experience'? Which perhaps only hit us after unconscious repetition, much like the repeated words you mention and the echoing sounds of 'shadow' and 'tide'.
Yes, that struck me about the crossword. And also the lack of letter counts after the clues, which makes multiple word answers much harder. I like 'slow bars of light and shadow' very much -- when I decided to use it as the title of this post, I also noticed how it obliquely describes the look of a blank crossword grid...
I hadn't thought about the dark and light, blank and cancelled, in a crossword, so thank you for this too. Something to mull over. Like the current crossword which is giving me grief, and it's not even cryptic.
How heartening it is to lean on the gate and watch your plough shining down the sillions with no sense of the plod entailed! And the field looks all the better for it. Many thanks indeed.
Wonderful, wonderful! Thank you.
Still hoping you read Blythe’s Church Times columns one day.
Ah yes! I found a copy secondhand in Great Yarmouth recently… Must get reading.