Work...

[liadnan]

seems to be exploding in a variety of interesting ways, and for once in my proper ground of litigation. So I may not have time to write much for a while. Managed to do very little in the way of planning my final exit from the island over the weekend, instead I lazed around, half-heartedly tidied the house, read most of The Avignon Quintet, and went to The Jersey War Tunnels, which doubles as a museum of the Occupation and also contains an exhibition on Violette Szabo (though her only connexion with the place is that Tania Szabo, who accepted her mother's posthumous George Cross at the age of 7, lives on the island). May find some time to write more about this later, but probably not... Fascinating photo collection by Joe Lievre, including a rather charged section on collaborators, some of whom live yet though not, I think, on the island, most left in a hurry one step ahead of the lynch mob soon after liberation (just after VE day, the islands having been bypassed on and after D-Day) (quite literally in at least one case, the police turned up just as they were throwing the rope over the tree...)

Didn't watch the Oscars, still haven't bothered to find out what happened and don't really care to be honest. Did watch a Song for Europe. Oh dear God... Midsomer Murders as amiably daft as ever.

Still debating potential holiday. In the meantime, I think I may have one last break to St Malo this weekend...

Comments

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

I am (or used to be) a big fan of Durrell; I think I found The Avignon Quintet (if it is the series I am thinking of - I had in my mind that it was Quincunx?) a bit too similar - I was so taken with the Alexandria Quartet that I read a lot of his stuff in quick succession.

[liadnan]

I've never quite finished the Quintet before, though I've started many times and have read all his other published work many times. It's such a complex work.
There are links between the novels I believe - Tunc and Nunquam tie in with the Alexandria Quartet, for instance (if I remember rightly).
It is Quintet. Are you thinking of Quincunx, by Charles Palliser (which I've never read but intend to some day.

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

...which I have also read, so I am clearly muddled. It must be my age.

But I was less impressed by the Quintet than the Quartet, which left a huge impression on me.

[liadnan]

At the moment I'm agreeing with you, but this may be in part a factor of familiarity.

On Szabo

[liadnan]

... remembered to look for something:
The poem that Leo Marks of SOE wrote for his girlfriend, killed in an aircrash, and later issued to Szabo (whose brief marriage ended when her husband died at El Alamein in the Free French forces) as her code poem.

The Life That I Have

"The life that I have
Is all that I have
And the life that I have
Is yours

The love that I have
Of the life that I have
Is yours and yours and yours.

A sleep I shall have
A rest I shall have
Yet death will be but a pause
For the peace of my years
In the long green grass
Will be yours and yours and yours."

Leo Marks

Re: On Szabo

[nicnac.livejournal.com]

Beautiful poem, we studied it as part of a series on death for A level Eng Lit (lots of Plath, as you might imagine.)