psmv6: A dream

A dream last night about an examination, the sort of thing one might have sat in the late 1960s, with an examination paper containing perhaps a dozen questions, of which good answers to two or three would get you through.

This was rather a long examination, with the dream being clear about it running for three and half hours. At the end of which, I had been sitting for too long and was rather uncomfortable. I suppose this last reflects my sitting capability now, rather than that then.

I found the examination paper itself rather a mess and I could not work it out at all. But I did manage answers to the first two questions. Quite short answers, together only occupying around two sides of A4. Which, according to my recollection this morning, was not the size of paper that I used during examinations at that time. Perhaps foolscap - a size of paper which my father made a great deal of use of, being something of a scribbler on the side.

And I made the common mistake of not taking the first half hour to study the examination paper before starting to write. All to apt in real life to result in one's making a bit of a mess of things, of not doing nearly as well as one should have. Except, that is, that part of what the examination might be testing is one's ability to organise oneself properly under stress. At least, that is how a prospective employer might look at the matter, more interested in that than, say, your knowledge of the organisation of an orchid or of the history of ancient Iraq, fascinating though they both might be in themselves.

In the dream, I had made this mistake and had failed to understand what the examination paper, a thick wadge of many pages, was mostly about until it was far too late. Whether I had passed or not was a bit touch and go.

Galsworthy

Moving on, I had been reading my Galsworthy short stories (of reference 2) the day before, stories which vary greatly both in their length and in their subject matter, at least in their settings, than I remember from my holiday reading in December.

Furthermore, there did not seem to be any coherence in their order, all just jumbled together. But this morning, I turn to the forward (written by the author in 1925, in Algeria of all places) and the contents pages which follow.

A modest forward by someone whom I suppose by 1925 had been successful. Some interesting thoughts about how a writer should stick to himself, rather than bending overmuch to the whims of the marketplace. Thoughts which go well with financial independence! For which see reference 3 - which also explains why Devon crops up in quite a lot of the stories.

But he also explains that the 50 or so stories are paired, so that both stories in the pair are, in some sense at least, about the same thing, but with one written before 1914 and one written after. All this becomes much clearer, after the event as it were, when I consult the contents pages.

I close with a bit of trivia. One of the stories, very short, is built around a Japanese quince in one of those garden squares that one gets in west London, say Kensington.

Aha, think I, I know all about Japanese quinces. We came across one of those recently at Wisley. And a very handsome small tree it was too. Poking around this morning, I find that the name is used both for a bush and a small tree. The former is now, a hundred years later, common enough in suburban gardens. I think I have grown one myself, without knowing what it was called. And the latter is probably what is snapped above - downloaded before I had learned that there were two plants to chose from.

And while we have indeed come across some interesting small trees at Wisley, with names involving 'Japanese' or 'Japonica', the quince is not among them.

There is a quince to be found at Hampton Court, noticed at reference 6. And I believe there is quite a prolific bush behind our next door neighbour's front wall.

And so to breakfast.

PS: yesterday was a fish supper day and there was some cod left over. Which combined with some left over potatoes (plus an egg for binding) made fish cakes for breakfast this morning. Turning over not that clever, but the cakes were pretty good. The Waitrose apple juice left was pretty good too: not over-sweet like so much of the apple juice offered for sale. In fact, their bottle did not mention added sugar at all.