You need never read this book

Neverland: J.M. Barrie, the Du Mauriers, and the Dark Side of Peter Pan by Piers Dudgeon
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

First off, I finished reading this book out of pure altruism: so you won't have to. All right, it's also because I paid for the damned thing. I found it in the bargain bin of my local bookstore and it certainly looked interesting.

And it's not a boring read, it's just a really really really irritating read. I was about a third of the way through when I pulled Andrew Birkin's J.M. Barrie and the Lost Boys out of my shelves to remind myself what a good book on the subject is like. (And seriously, Andrew Birkin's book is what you need if you want a better picture of the truly eerie story of James Barrie and his relationship with the five young Llewellyn-Davies brothers; trust me, the film Finding Neverland is nowhere near what really happened.)

Then I found myself reading other, totally unrelated books because I was wasting too much time hurling this one across the room.

Finally, I forced myself to finish it and will now try to get Piers Dudgeon's general arguments in a nutshell. This will not be easy because his book swings back and forth like a pendulum, between the DuMaurier family -- particularly Daphne DuMaurier, author of Rebecca and The Birds among many other things, and her grandfather George DuMaurier, creator of Svengali -- and Barrie himself. (Daphne's aunt Sylvia DuMaurier was the mother of the five Llewellyn-Davies brothers.)

Ready?

James Barrie, author and playwright and creator of Peter Pan, was Satan.

He used his plays and books as "alchemic texts" to ensnare and mesmerize Sylvia and her vulnerable sons, as well as Daphne DuMaurier and her handsome and shallow father Gerald DuMaurier. This was apparently done by Barrie's imagining what he wanted his targets to become (inspired by the works of George DuMaurier, even though there is no evidence that the two authors met -- although Dudgeon thinks they did and says so repeatedly) and then writing them into his plays and novels, thus gaining power over them: "Theatre-goers lapped up his supernatural plays, but never quite understood why," Dudgeon claims, even though he states in a later chapter that Peter Pan is the one work by Barrie that has endured. Are we to gather by this that only early-twentieth-century audiences were susceptible to Barrie's demonic machinations?

Furthermore, J.M. Barrie was apparently responsible for the deaths of:
a)his brother David (no actual evidence, but Dudgeon thinks it's likely);
b)his sister's fiancé (Barrie gave him the horse that threw him);
c)Captain Robert Scott (Barrie apparently planted the idea in Scott's mind that he was a heroic explorer and dissuaded him from using dogs in his fatal expedition to the South Pole);
d)Arthur and Sylvia Llewellyn-Davies (who both died of cancer four years apart, but Dudgeon assures us that Daphne DuMaurier killed off Gertrude Lawrence the same way, also by the use of "alchemic texts");
e)Michael, Peter, and Jack Llewellyn-Davies (possible suicide, definite suicide, ill heath -- but Barrie, by then long-dead, had never liked Jack that much...)

Remarkably, Dudgeon does not seem to blame Barrie for the falling in battle during the First World War of his favourite Llewellyn-Davies brother, George, nor for the demise of his producer Charles Frohman who was on his way back to England at Barrie's request on the Lusitania which was torpedoed by the Germans.

At one point, Dudgeon quotes Daphne DuMaurier's biographer Margaret Forster who criticized Daphne for mixing documentary fact 'in the most awkward fashion with entirely imaginary suppositions, greatly to [the book's]detriment'. That sums up this book perfectly. Go read Birkin's book instead.

Now, I'm going to toss this into the give-away box, but not before marking it up in pencil to warn the unwary. Then I'm going to read something by someone who writes well, has a good editor, and doesn't use speculation instead of research.

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A bit of Tom Lehrer can improve anything

So the great day is here and I'm happy to report that I got my Purdy's plus a whole bottle of Bailey's Irish Cream (which isn't large enough, but never mind) to guzzle while I watch Sherlock tonight. The Resident Fan Boy gave me a card with a dog resembling the Accent Snob on it. I have firmly pointed out that if he's suggesting I'm the Accent Snob's mother, what is he suggesting I am, really? And to think carefully before answering...

Younger daughter brought me a rose from church and gave me a button to wear. Elder daughter took me to a sushi lunch and presented me with possibly the greatest Mother's Day card ever. (Not to denigrate the magnificent hand-made cards I've received over the years.)

But I think, to give the proper classic tone to today's celebration, I should share the Tom Lehrer ditty that I found myself singing in the shower this morning.
 You're welcome.
From the Bible to the popular song,
There's one theme that we find right along.
Of all ideals they hail as good,
The most sublime is motherhood.

There was a man though, who it seems,
Once carried this ideal to extremes.
He loved his mother and she loved him,
And yet his story is rather grim.

There once lived a man named Oedipus Rex.
You may have heard about his odd complex.
His name appears in Freud's Index
'cause he loved his mother.

His rivals used to say quite a bit,
That as a monarch he was most unfit.
But still in all they had to admit
That he loved his mother.

Yes he loved his mother like no other.
His daughter was his sister and his son was his brother.
One thing on which you can depend is,
He sure knew who a boy's best friend is!

When he found what he had done,
He tore his eyes out one by one.
A tragic end to a loyal son
Who loved his mother.

So be sweet and kind to mother,
Now and then have a chat.
Buy her candy or some flowers or a brand new hat.
But maybe you had better let it go at that!

Or you may find yourself with a quite complex complex,
And you may end up like Oedipus.
I'd rather marry a duck-billed platypus,
Than end up like old Oedipus Rex. 

You'll have to have them all pulled out

 I'm reasonably sure I'm getting Purdy's chocolates tomorrow.  Purdy's are from British Columbia.  They are the best.  At least I've always thought so until today.

So the Resident Fan Boy, younger daughter and I went down into deepest darkest New Edinburgh to check out the "Locavore Artisans Food Fest".  (Elder daughter elected to stay home with the Accent Snob and take him for his midday pull -- he doesn't care much for walks.)  My main reason for going was because I knew I could get Harvest Honey there.  I was hoping they still made their Irish Cream Honey Spread, but had to settle for several jars of their Cinnamon Honey Butter and Chocolate Honey.  (Listen, I need something for thank-you gifts, okay?)

After standing in long lines with more new-borns than I'd seen at our prenatal graduation class for wood oven pizza and rather strange soda drinks without the soda (they'd run out), we ventured back in and wandered a little too close to the Koko Chocolates booth.  Oh geez.  They had milk caramels.  And raspberry truffles.  (Raspberry, I tell you.) And white vanilla rum truffles.  And bacon truffles.

Wait.  Bacon???

"It's one of our seasonal flavours," she explained.
"Bacon is seasonal?"
"Well, normally, we offer them in November, but I've made a special batch for this event."
"Well, I thought, yeah, closer to Christmas.  I've read Charlotte's Web..."

The Resident Fan Boy had to take a moment to recover from that one, but in the end, couldn't resist making the bacon (see what I did there?) one of the six lucky truffles we took home with us.  He decided it wasn't really worth repeating the experience.

I tried the Raspberry truffle, even though I'm not that fond of dark chocolate.  I started kind of vibrating and making odd noises.  When I came to, I realized I was rocking slightly and rubbing my thighs.

 Good thing I was alone.

I'd tell you about the fresh donuts and the ice-cream sandwiches made with brownie crusts, but you've probably had enough food porn.

Billy Collins is not a kind of drink

Through the wonders of live-streaming, I can pop into Sunday services at Demeter's church.  I watch her toddle up after the offering to light a candle, and sometimes I see her bun hovering at the bottom left of the screen. It's oddly reassuring.

One recent Sunday,  I tuned in to discover that the morning service would be a lay-led poetry reading and that my mum was among the readers.  To my delight, my mother's selection was from a poem-a-day anthology I'd sent her a year or so ago.  With a world-weary wryness that matched the tenor of the poem beautifully, she read "Forgetfulness" by Billy Collins, and told us afterwards that she was unprepared for the laughter. The lady who had organized the service, a long-time friend of my mother's, made a comment afterwards about Billy Collins being "accessible". I have a nasty feeling that she was not being complimentary (she's a writer and artist herself and can be a wee bit snarky about those kind of things), but hope I'm wrong. Here's the man himself reading "Forgetfulness" and a poem that is particularly pertinent with Mother's Day coming up -- "The Lanyard":
I first became aware of Billy Collins when he was a guest on the radio show A Prairie Home Companion, about the same time he became the US Poet Laureate. Almost immediately, I got myself a collection of his poems, accessibility being a plus for me. It must have been about 2002 because elder daughter was turning ten, and I knew this was not the moment to show her this poem:

On Turning Ten 

The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in a bad light ---
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
 It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends, 
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I would shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees.  I bleed.

- from The Art of Drowning (1995)

Another favourite of mine is called "Passengers" and I'm putting a link to it for two reasons:  1) you may like the option of hearing it read as well as reading it; 2) if you're travelling by air any time soon, you may want to skip it.  Trust me.

The Second Child

With Mother's Day bearing down upon us, if you'll pardon the expression, it seems that the media is brimming with items on the life-changing event of having a baby.  Some years ago, there was a particularly cloying and sentimental ad from a nameless manufacturer of disposable diapers that featured a new mom burbling about giving birth:  "It was the ultimate experience of my life!!!"  (Really, lady?  How unfortunate for you and your motherless child.)

What no one seems to discuss is the fact that the child that will change your life irrevocably is the second one.  With one child, you can still hang on to vestiges of your old life; you can pursue sports and hobbies, and your friends will stay your friends, to whom you will be "Bart, Miriam and little Jasper". With Child Number Two, you become "Bart, Miriam, and The Kids", your child-free friends will float from your life, and you will not have the strength to woo them back.  You may not even realize that they have gone.

Another hazard of moving from a one-child to a two-child family is dealing with the assumptions that you know what you are doing.  One assumption comes from yourself:  "I have a kid, right?  I know what I'm getting into."  No, you don't.  Child Number Two (and every subsequent child, should you be foolhardy enough to continue) will differ in every way from Number One; everything that worked with the first kid will fall flat.  Children aren't just children; they're individual human beings.  I was what they called a "home support worker" in my misspent youth and I was often sent into help mums with a new baby.  Whether it was Baby Number Three or Baby Number Six the cry was the same:  "None of the others was ever like this!"

The other assumption comes a wee bit earlier.  It is assumed that if this is your second pregnancy that you remember what to do.  I don't know about you guys but I had a severe case of porridge brain throughout my first pregnancy and thus had very little to go on when I got knocked up the second time.  Oh, both children were planned;  what I mean is that I was very nearly as clueless the second time around.  The fact that there were four years between my daughters didn't actually help.

Plus, of course, just as every child is different, every pregnancy is different.  So the months, weeks, days and hours before younger daughter entered our lives sixteen years ago were full of surprises.  Like gestational diabetes, for example.  I was informed, as my third trimester began, that my blood sugars were elevated "slightly" and that I would be going in for nutrition counselling.  By the end of the morning, they were showing me how to inject myself with insulin.  "I feel like the bloody Balkans," I protested.  "First I was a border skirmish, now I'm a global crisis.  What gives?"

Things got even more fun when I was required to go in to the hospital (two-hour round trip bus ride) for weekly "non-stress tests", usually followed by a one-to-four-hour wait for a brief consult with an obstetrician who informed me with grim delight on one occasion (he was a rather grim man) that I was dilated 3 centimetres, so he merrily stripped my membranes.  Never said what he was doing, of course, just left me recovering from what had seemed to be one hell of a rough pelvic exam.  I was wiping the cold sweat from my upper lip when I noticed the blood on the examining table.

And so on through hours of induction culminating in an emergency C-section in the wee hours of the morning (I could have told them that was coming), then a spinal fluid leak from the epidural, resulting in headaches whenever I sat up, resolved by sealing it with a blood patch. Golly that hurt.  Oh, and did I mention the rigour?

And yet? And yet.  The most danger I was ever in of having more than two children was when I gazed at the ineffable beauty of my second-born.  I thought the beauty of my first-born was a fluke, you see.


I'll shut up now before I start to sound like an insufferable commercial for disposable diapers.  (For the record, I used cloth.) 

Being left behind

Younger daughter should have had her birthday today, but a series of frustrating events resulted in her being born in the wee hours of the tenth of May. If I feel up to it, I might reminisce tomorrow. In the meantime, there are two songs I associate with the month younger daughter entered our lives. One is "Big Bang Baby" by the Stone Temple Pilots, but I can't find a clear video that also doesn't feature a lengthy air freshener commercial. So I'll stick with Canadian Content or Can/Con (a rule by which radio stations in Canada had to play a certain percentage of Canadian music in a given time frame). This is the first Tragically Hip song I actually recall liking. There have been more since, but this was the first time I realized I could like the Hip:  

First thing we'd climb the tree
 and maybe then we'd talk
 or sit silently and listen to our thoughts
 with illusions of someday casting a golden light
 no dress rehearsal, this is our life
 that's where the hornet stung me
 and I had a feverish dream
 with revenge and doubt
 tonight, we smoke them out

 You are ahead by a century

 Stare in the morning shroud
 and then the day began
 I tilted your cloud, you tilted my hand
 rain falls in real time and rain fell through the night
 no dress rehearsal, this is our life
 That's when the hornet stung me
 and I had a serious dream
 with revenge and doubt
 tonight, we smoke them out

 You are ahead by a century
 but this is our life
 and disappointing you's gettin' me down

Mariage blanc

While I understand that arranged marriages can be a success, I can't help but wonder if some of them are like my relationship with the city of Ottawa.

We first met almost exactly twelve years ago when I took then about-to-be-four-year-old younger daughter on her first cross-country plane trip to meet the Resident Fan Boy, who was already working in Hades while I attempted to sell our house in Victoria.

The trip had an inauspicious prelude when, in the flurry of last-minute preparations, I managed to lock myself out of the house with younger daughter inside.  I ran across the street and got a neighbour to phone my mum who had elder daughter at her condo a few blocks away.  Younger daughter, when my mum rushed over with an extra key, had not noticed my absence.  Then I had to rise before dawn, take a protesting and sleepy preschooler in a cab to the airport and spend five hours on a plane in the days before they had entertainment centres on the back of the seat in front of you.

I had left Victoria in the green and leafy splendour of early May, and first glimpsed my new home beyond the wing-tip of the circling plane:  brown fields with patches of frost.  The taxi took us past forests of flattened and grey tree trunks, victims of the Ice Storm of '98.

There followed six days of being driven around by a real estate agent through neighbourhoods that meant nothing to me, to see bleak brick houses that looked weather-beaten and grim.  We also made the rounds of museums and libraries, struggling without a stroller (I had lacked the courage to lug one on the plane), and I tried to imagine a life here in this city where my daughters would grow up.  We went to the local Unitarian church and my heart sank.  The sermon was a diatribe against Conrad Black (before his prison term), and reference was made to the beauty of a member's home and the fact that the choir had sung for the Governor-General.

We celebrated younger daughter's turning four in the hotel suite in which the Resident Fan Boy was living, and by the time we were readying ourselves for the flight home without him, the trees were finally showing green fuzz and the tulips were beginning to open.  I tried to push my doubts aside.  Surely, my home was where the Resident Fan Boy was.  Surely I could make this work...

Getting back to Victoria meant hauling my new four-year-old through three plane rides.  At Toronto Airport, she climbed up inside a play structure and I fought rising panic when I couldn't get her to come down.  I could see our flight boarding.

In Victoria, our cab took us past trees fully in leaf, blowing in a temperate and gentle sea breeze.  Flowers everywhere.   My relief was tempered with the knowledge that the next time we left, we would not be returning to our light-filled house.  The city that I had not chosen was waiting.  And you know, it hasn't even been a convenient marriage.  (No, Resident Fan Boy.  I'm not talking about you.)

When spring doesn't

It occurred to me the other day that I haven't strolled out and just taken pictures in ages.  Part of the reason for this is that I'm usually either on my way somewhere and don't want to be carting my Nikon along, or I'm in the company of the Accent Snob who is always anxious to get home, no matter how short a time it's been since we've left the house.

However, yesterday I was short a few thousand steps from my daily pedometer goal.  (Along with "NaBloPoMo"-ing, I'm trying to make 10,000 steps for every day in May.)  However, elder daughter was taking the Accent Snob for his preprandial walk, so I stuffed my camera in a bag and set off along the Rideau River, determined to switch off the auto-focus.

This is, alas, my twelfth spring in Hades, and it's safe to say there's been no other spring like it in my experience.  An Ottawan spring generally lasts two weeks, three weeks tops.  In March (which still counts as winter in Hades), we hurtled into a week of summer temperatures.  It felt damned odd walking in a humidex along streets lined with barren trees and brown grass.  The trees and the grass themselves got wildly confused, throwing out green shoots, only to get flash-frozen when winter temperatures abruptly returned.  Then the temperatures rose and we were surrounded by bewildered Red Monarch butterflies which got blasted by the next cold spell.  By then we were in April, and the daffodils, tulips and dandelions (for Pete's sake) all appeared at the same time.  (This never happens.)

So now it's May and instead of the sudden green hemorrhage that normally heralds the end of the brief spring, we have timid green leaves cautiously venturing out on the branches overhead.


No turning back now.

Persephone enters the previous decade

I'm aware that I'm a dinosaur, and not just because I have adolescent daughters.  I also have the news media to remind me that just about every item I use is tottering on the edge of obsolescence: our land line, the DVDs, the CDs, network television, the PC, even, heaven help me, my cherished iPod.

This week's life-changing event was my acquisition of a lap-top.  In fact yesterday's post was a mile-stone:  my very first post composed and posted entirely in my lap.  Kind of a cyber-lap-dance, only way more expensive.

I've been yearning for my own lap-top for some time, particularly after both daughters acquired theirs to navigate university (because you can't do university these days without one) and high school (because when you have a severe learning and language disability, along with less than fabulous fine motor skills, you need all the help you can get).  I had neither excuse, but a desire not to go through another summer house-sitting a place lacking a DVD-player and sporting a dial-up.  Also, neither daughter will let me use her lap-top.  Ever.  It's the Harry Potter books all over again.

So last Friday found me standing in a cold sweat in an Apple store, looking pleadingly at elder daughter whenever the salesman asked me a question.  The session turned into a practical exam, because when my new device was "loaded", it involved my entering things with trembling fingers used to a PC keyboard under the watchful eye of the salesman/techie.

"How bad was I?"  I whispered to elder daughter as we exited with my trophy in a bag over my shoulder.
"Let's just say you've come across as more intelligent on other occasions," muttered elder daughter diplomatically.

That bad, huh?

"What about that Apple Care, though?"  Having dropped what seems like an enormous amount of money on this thing, the salesman managed to talk me into paying extra for whatever tech support would be needed, even though elder daughter flatly refused it for herself.
"Well, I think you're a better candidate for that kind of thing," she said, holding precariously on to her diplomacy.
"So you think I'll be dropping by the store with questions all the time?"
"Mum, you will have me.  I'm kinda your live-in one-to-one tutor."

Which, of course, was why I'd timed my purchase for the beginning of elder daughter's return from Halifax, in the hope that by July, I'll have this MacBook stuff under my belt.  It's just unfortunate that Blogger chose this time to switch to a completely new format at the same time I'm struggling to understand the re-designed NaBloPoMo.

So this has been an interesting weekend while I attempt to retrain my personal-computer mind and digits into the configuration of a MacBook Pro.  It may be working.  I still do a few things at the PC, due mainly to my failure to figure out what my "administrative password" is, which means I can't download things like Adobe Flash (which, I'm discovering this weekend, I need).  This morning, I caught myself stroking the bar below the PC keyboard, before remembering to reach for the mouse.

I'm not sure why elder daughter has barricaded herself in her bedroom, though.  I miss her.  Also, I have another question....

Another fool moon

I don't know why it is that I seem to attend performances of A Company of Fools on full moons.  It's appropriate, but not planned.

This particular evening, we had only a few blocks to walk,  past young basketball players in the street and  people sitting on their front porches sipping beer bottles, on a Friday evening that had suddenly changed from lowering skies and fat intermittent rain drops to slanting golden sunshine.  We strolled down to the United Church hall and took our places in line behind a man in wildly printed trousers and scarlet socks beneath his sandal straps.  And he was an audience member.

The night's offering was Shakespeare's Dead.  So apparently was the leading man, whose portrait glowered from the stage in a very Barrymore fashion.  As the three Fools (AL Connors -- first name not a typo, Margo MacDonald and Scott Florence) informed us, in varying degrees of sorrow, the late leading man had had a passion for Shakespeare matched only by his passion for Jack Daniels, and both had had a hand in his demise.

Things got a little weird after that, which is business as usual for the Fools.  Anyway, Scott Florence's character (named Brie after the cheese) ended up ingesting the cremated remains of the Barrymore look-alike and being possessed by the spirit of William Shakespeare, and if you find that preposterous, you have no business attending a Company of Fools show.

One thing led to another:  Romeo and Juliet performed in rap; Macbeth as a musical (younger daughter loved the parodies of West Side Story, South Pacific, and The Wizard of Oz); and a dizzying parade of bloody Shakespearean deaths which involved the actors hauling yards and yards of scarlet rags from various parts of their clothes.  (I guess you could say the deaths were fabricated -- ahem -- fabricated -- oh, never mind...)

Perhaps most surreal of all was a murder scene from Richard III.  Actually,  I'm not sure if it was Richard III; I kind of lost my concentration amid the flying cat toys.  See, the trio explained that if an audience in Shakespeare's time wanted to express their antipathy towards the villains in the piece, they would hurl vegetables, fruit, and live kittens.  To forestall the evening's audience from indulging in something too similar, they handed out a large variety of cat toys which then hit the stage and, frequently, the actors with soft thuds and disconcerting squeaks.  It was also at this point that a handful of younger audience members (in the eight-to-twelve-year range, I'd say) who had, so far, restricted themselves to smart-alecky remarks and throwing themselves to the floor in death throes, threw restraint to the winds along with their cat toys and scrambled on stage to retrieve them in order to hurl them again.  Not a word from their dignified parents, but frankly, it's that kind of neighbourhood.  The Fools had to intervene for themselves.

The night's entertainment ended with, naturally, the dance sequence from Michael Jackson's Thriller.  It made some sort of sense at the time.

The Resident Fan Boy looked askance at the number and denomination of bills that I thrust into a waiting Fool's cap, but, dammit, a Company of Fools is one of the few things that almost makes coming to Ottawa worthwhile.  Well, nothing about Hades is worthwhile, but the Fools come close.

We left the hall and were confronted by the "Super Moon" which reaches its fullest splendour tonight.  About now, actually.  I'd better go take a look.