Passacaglia and Fugue

Book Review: The Gastronomical Me, by M F K Fisher
This was a random selection from the work book sale; I had never heard of Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher before. First published in 1943, this is generically though not strictly autobiographical in nature, and covers about the first half of her life. There are early reminiscences about food preparation at home, and at boarding school in California, before further study in Chicago, and then marriage and travel with her first husband to Europe (mostly France, but also Switzerland and Italy). The European section is the bulk and highlight of the book; this is travel writing, and it's food writing, but it's really people writing, about the characters and situations she encounters. To some extent it reads uncomfortably today, as she plainly had a privileged upbringing and is frequently quite snobbish, but it seems to be done unconsciously and without ill intent; and it's not as if the French academic colleagues of her husband considered her a few steps down from their social level, either. The story becomes darker as her husband falls ill, she begins an affair, and Europe descends towards war; in the golden age of ocean liners she documents the attitudes of ocean-crossing Germans in particular in the 1930s, and there is some reportage about an escaped prisoner on a train in Italy that would be harrowing (it clearly disturbed Fisher at the time) were it not for the foreknowledge that much worse was to come. The last section, following the death of her husband, describes a trip to Mexico in 1941; it doesn't connect so well with the rest of the book, but it's obviously describing changed circumstances.

After looking through the guidebooks, we decided we couldn't fit all three Baltic states into a single holiday, so we opted for a trip to Rīga and Tallin. The logistics were straightforward but not trivial, and we ended up with flights to/from Gatwick instead of our more usual Heathrow.

Fri 8th: We get up at ridiculous-o'clock. Fortunately the roads are running smoothly and the directions to Purple Parking are clear, and we get there by 7am. Check-in/bag-drop with Air Baltic is straightforward, as we can use the business queue (a quirk of having the temerity to pre-purchase hold baggage). Normally I don't pay much attention to the aircraft itself, but I do notice the Bombardier CS300 seems particularly new and shiny, and the airline magazine informs me it is also significantly more fuel-efficient. However, it does seem unusually warm, unlike most aircraft which seem somewhat over-chilled. The flight is smooth and on-time, and although there are at least two stag parties on board it's an orderly affair. Transfer by bus into central Rīga works as advertised and it's a short walk to the hotel. We take a walk around the town, taking in the Alexander Nevsky orthodox cathedral, the Art Nouveau district, parks, squares, and the old Zeppelin hangars which now form the central markets, which are closed by the time we get there.

Sat 9th: Overnight, the power has blipped at least three times, and each time it comes back on, all lights in the room come on, which is irritating to say the least. But after a decent breakfast we're off to the Art Nouveau museum and the cathedral. In the afternoon we visit the House of the Black Heads - a guildhall whose name derives from St Mauritius, though the house is a complete post-WW2 (and indeed, post-Soviet) reconstruction.

Sun 10th: We take in the Rīga Bourse art museum, and later the Latvian National Museum of Art (which turns out to be free on that day) and the Metzendorff House.

Mon 11th: We have a short morning to fill, so we visit the Synagogue (again, largely reconstructed) and the interior of the central market, before catching our bus to Tallinn. It's a four-hour trip (with a short pause in Pärnu) and the Latvian A1 isn't the best of roads - a single carriageway, though it's so straight it could have been built by the Romans. The transfer between Tallinn International Bus Station and the hotel is the one bit of the trip I hadn't researched properly, and we muddle around without actually paying for the tram ride, because it seems everything is electronic and online. (Fortunately, we don't claim back the outstanding balance on the card we buy for the rest of the holiday, so my conscience is clear). We wander around in the late afternoon and early evening in part of the Old Town. It's obviously picturesque, though I have a sense the tourism element is hammed up and over-done, with medieval-themed restaurants all around the town square.

Tues 12th: It's raining - the one bad weather day in our holiday - so, having sorted out a public transport card (which it seems must be paid for by card, not cash) we head off to the Kadriorg district and the Kumu art museum. By the afternoon the clouds have cleared and it's dry to walk across to the Kadriorg palace. We also see Peter the Great's house and the Russalka memorial.

Wed 13th: We find we are waking up very early, due to the long hours of daylight, and the absence of any climate control in the hotel room, so before museums open we check out the ferry terminal, which is a 10-minute walk from the hotel, before booking ferry tickets for a trip to Helsinki later in the week. Back in the Old Town we take in the Kiek in de Kök Museum and Bastion Tunnels. An afternoon walk around the west side of the Old Town walls seems much quieter than the centre.

Thurs 14th: Out to the Kalamaja district and the Seaplane Museum. The Suur Tõll icebreaker is particularly interesting. Like all museums of this type, it is plagued by small people, but for the most part we avoid them.

Fri 15th: Another early start. We looked at the times and decided the 07:00 ferry to Helsinki was the one to catch. Check-in and boarding is straightforward, and we've booked breakfast on board. We get a good view of the archipelago and Suomenlinna fort as we approach Helsinki. Once we've disembarked it's about half an hour walk into the city centre, where we visit the cathedral, the impressive University Library, the Railway Station, and other attractions.

Most of the afternoon is taken up in the Ateneum and National Museum. The return ferry departs at 20:30 and we've booked the all-you-can-eat buffet, which turns out also to be all-you-can-drink, but the wine isn't so good that you want more than a couple of glasses anyway.

Sat 16th: It turns out we misread the opening times of the architecture museum, so our morning is filled by the Estonian History Museum at the Great Guild Hall instead. This proves to be more interesting and less interactive than the guide book had suggested.

We're very early at Tallinn airport, but it was always going to be a difficult day to fill; it gives us time to stock up on essentials such as canned bear meat, elk salami, and lingonberry jam. The return flight is smooth and we're home at a reasonable hour.

Book Review: Born in the GDR, by Hester Vaizey
Most of the books that show up in the work book sale are new releases, but sometimes there's an odd one that's a few years old. I wonder whether publishers pad out a package with random titles. In any case, this had been on my "to read" list for a while when I saw it, so it was an instant buy.

Vaizey conducted face-to-face interviews with eight people who were children or young adults in East Germany in 1989, discussing their experiences of the GDR regime, the changes of 1989, and German reunification. Though it's difficult to claim they are representative, they do cover a wide cross-section, from the families of party members through to prisoners and those antagonistic to the state. Vaizey highlights the way perceptions of the GDR have been polarized, as represented by the films Good Bye Lenin! and The Lives of Others, and tries to find a third way. She uncovers a broad acceptance of the state of affairs, with the knowledge that there were views that could not openly be discussed, but that compliance was not too difficult for many, and that those who didn't rock the boat were generally satisfied with their lot. However, for some, who could not tolerate the situation, penalties could be harsh (one of the interviewees is a gay man who was approached by the Stasi to act as an informer, and as a result was subsequently caught attempting to leave the GDR, and imprisoned not for his sexuality but for the "crime" of trying to leave the country). There is more consensus in the area of dissatisfaction with the reunification process, which was implemented more as a take-over by West Germany. Although financially inevitable, the opinion of many interviewees is that there could and should have been greater compromise over the political system, with some initial bewilderment and more long-term alienation of Easteners on the materialistic culture of the West, a division that still persists in some ways to this day.

Book Review: The Spy of Venice, by Benet Brandreth
I always struggle to define what kind of fiction I like, so I try to be open-minded when I come across things that look potentially interesting in the work book sale. In an unusual fragment of preconditioning, I recall that my parents didn't have good things to say about their school recollections of Shakespeare or Dickens; I think my mother may also have had to read Chaucer. In turn, I had a mixed bag when it came to English teachers, and although I found I could tolerate Dickens' A Tale Of Two Cities (also discovering that it is considered fairly uncharacteristic of him) I was distinctly uninterested in Henry V or Macbeth, which were what school and the GCSE syllabus of the time conspired to offer me.

Nonetheless, I found the prospect of a Venetian setting appealing, and felt this book would be worth trying. I'm glad I did, because although I wouldn't say I enjoyed it unreservedly, I did find it enjoyable for the most part and quite entertaining. In one sense it's a counterfactual story, making use of missing years in Shakespeare's chronology; but on the other, it's speculative fiction on how those years might have been filled. Twenty-year old William Shakespeare ("A shrewd-faced lad who might have made something of himself in the glove trade were it not that his mind wandered", as his biography in the list of characters has it) finds himself on the wrong end of the local steward's ire and decides to set forth for London, following a company of players who have just recently supplied entertainment at Stratford on Avon. By the kind of coincidence that only occurs in books he becomes entangled in a plot ultimately controlled (as all such things of the period must be) by Sir Francis Walsingham, concerning an exchange, commercial and intelligencial, with the Republic of Venice. The story is constructed in a structure similar to a play, in five acts, with bite-sized chapters in each; and also the various plot twists and turns seem to fit the theatrical scheme too. I found a few hints to works and quotations of the Bard, and the character of Oldcastle made me think of Falstaff straight away; I'm sure someone more familiar with Shakespeare would recognise far more references. I did find the pace of the book a little uneven - in particular the journey to Venice, and the drawn-out scheming that goes on within that city progressed slowly but with bursts of action - but overall this worked well, and it was frequently clever and witty.

I was hesitant about booking a holiday in Portugal in mid-June, but was persuaded to go ahead. We had a good time - eventually - although, really, much of it was too hot for me; generally into the 30s and possibly hitting 40°C in Lisbon yesterday.

Things didn't get off to a good start, when we tried to check in on Thursday evening, 12 hours beforehand; BA's website just gave us an error message and told us to go to the airport. So we waited for the exit poll, raised our eyebrows, and went to bed, getting up the following morning at ridiculous-o'clock. There was an unexpected queue at 5:30 in the morning at the entrance to Purple Parking, but the airport wasn't too busy.

Unfortunately, we were told, BA had overbooked the flight. We were given standby boarding passes and told to wait. Later, we were told to take everything airside. This didn't seem entirely correct, but it was a new experience, so we did exactly as we were told. Security, however, insisted that our hold baggage had to go back to the drop-off desk; so, we did that, returned, and ended up having to run through Heathrow Terminal 3's delightful "retail experience".

We made it onto our flight, but our checked baggage did not. Though we both had suspicions, we weren't informed of this until a semi-decipherable tannoy announcement at Lisbon told us to go to the baggage enquiries desk. Many years ago I had a colleague to whom this happened, and I knew his luggage had been couriered to his hotel by the evening, so I had hopes this was a standard process. It seemed to be so; but BA promised the luggage would be on the afternoon flight, and it wasn't. Our hotel was informed that it would be on the overnight flight, and it did indeed turn up by the following morning, but it didn't make for the most relaxing of starts.

Fri 9th: Arrival, somewhat discombobulated. The Metro appears to be straightforward to navigate and we head to the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, which houses a considerable collection, including some interesting Persian carpets and Turkish ceramics. We walk across the Parque Eduardo VII to the Aqueduto das Aguas Livres, a survivor of Lisbon's 1755 earthquake.

Sat 10th: After reacquainting ourselves with our possessions, we head off to explore the city centre - Baixa and Chiado. It comes quickly to our attention that there are many people wandering around the streets more-or-less openly offering drugs; one assumes that the police don't care much.

Later in the day we head over to the Castle. As well as taking in the building and museum, we pause to listen to the tango band rehearsing on an outdoor stage in the gardens.

Sun 11th: We take a tram to Belém. By this point it is becoming apparent that the Vivagem cards for public transport (basically like Oyster in London) aren't of the greatest quality (they're made of cardboard) and are prone to failure. Although the card only costs 50 cents it's quite annoying that you have to be so careful with them. The tram is packed and Belém is even busier; it's about a half hour queue in baking sunlight to get in to the Mosteiro doe Jerónimos, which is very ornate but otherwise not especially spectacular. The queue for the Tower on the riverfront is shorter, though not trivial.

Mon 12th: We head out to Sintra. The train from Rossio station is straightforward, but once there, the Rough Guide map isn't entirely clear and the text doesn't explain strongly enough that you should get the bus to the palace at Pena. Naïvely I reckon it's about a kilometre, but I haven't allowed for poor signage. We do eventually make it on foot, but our patience is tried. Fortunately, it's worth it. We return via the Moorish Castle.

Tues 13th: Another trip to Sintra, this time for the Palácio Nacional and the Quinta da Regaleira. Though I've only visited the house at West Wycombe Park, the cave system in the grounds at Regaleira suggests to me the Hell-Fire Caves; the Initiation Well seems like an inside-out Tower of Babel.

Wed 14th: We wake up to the news of the Grenfell Tower fire; after the attack in Borough Market and the coalition of crackpots, it adds to the stream of disturbing UK news. We spend the day in Lisbon, firstly in the Alfama district, visiting the Paneão Nacional (Pantheon), São Vicente de Fora, and the Water Museum at Barbadinhos. Although there's an exhibition we're really there for the steampunk of the preserved pumping station.

Later we trek out to Estrela; the basilica is disappointing, but the nearby park is pleasant and a granizado is refreshing.

Thurs 15th: More museums. There's a queue of about 15 minutes just to use the automated ticket machines at Cais do Sodré station, but once we get to Alcântara, the streets are quiet. The Museu do Oriente is excellent, but sadly it's almost deserted. After lunch we go to the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, which has a respectable number of visitors but is far from busy.

Fri 16th: We take a long-distance trip to Porto. We're a bit pressed for time, given the hilly nature of the city, so we don't venture too far from the centre, and don't make it to Vila Nova da Gaia, where the wine lodges are. But we do experience a Franceshina for lunch, and see the famous Lello bookshop.

Sat 17th: It turns out the botanical garden is closed, so we skip that part of the plan and move on to the Decorative arts museum. After lunch we take in the small Casa Museu Dr A Gonçalves. Although Lisbon Airport is chaotic and the check-in machine tells us to go to gate "undefined", the flight home is smoother. I notice smoke on the ground as we ascend from Lisbon Airport and wonder if it's a wildfire; we are oblivious to the catastrophe going on a few hundred kilometers away, though the train to Porto passed through Coimbra. On return, only about half of the electronic passport gates are in use for some reason, and Purple Parking's IVR is awkward and unforgiving, hanging up rather than repeating a question when you didn't hear it clearly the first time.

Lisbon was busy, but it didn't strike me as particularly commercial: the metro doesn't start until 6:30 in the morning, and there are often long intervals between trains. Likewise, the local trains were patchy - good for Sintra, but not so good in the direction of Cascais. Food was good though sometimes slow, and the hawking waiters in the city centre were even worse than the drug-dealers and selfie-stick sellers.