Excuse Me! What The Hell Is A "Jazz Fridge"?



Actually I may have misheard this on BBC3 last night. Reithian Ideals indeed. Maybe I will give up on moral relativism after all.

I have been trying to find a definitive picture of Joan Wyndham as she was around the time of Love Lessons but apart from the cover of one of her other books, the only picture is this one from her obit in the (deep breath) Daily Mail. I am not certain that this actually is the Joan Wyndham of Love Lessons and that in actual fact it might be the actress Joan Wyndham who despite being born in 1911 and according to all sources I can find is still alive at 97. Compare with this picture which is of the actress and this one which is the diarist though much older. Anyway, all this has been prompted by reading Love Lessons which I heard reviewed on A Good Read a couple of years ago and have been meaning to read ever since. The diary covers the early years of WW2 while Joan Wyndham was living at home with her mother though actually part of the bohemian life of artists and intellectuals in the area at that time. It is quite strange to see all these delicate flowers going to pieces under the threat of war and the blitz hasn't even started getting going yet. Wyndham herself doesn't seem to be as prone to this sort of collapse as much as the effete artists that surround her, being more concerned with maintaining her virtue in the face of near-assaults by various men. The book also reminds me slightly of the london exploits of Laurie Lee in As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning though that was a few years prior to Love lessons.

Also reading In Stitches which although instantly addictive and funny has straight away changed my view of Casualty departments. Funny in places but sadly pleading for sanity in the NHS in others. Very good and very important. Strangely we watched Casualty for the first time in ages last weekend on the strength of a whole episode about the F2 Ruth Winters who was a strangely compelling character despite the swotty stand-offishness. It is nice to see that TV drama seems to have started swinging back to ambiguous characters and unresolved plots. Daughter wants to be a Doctor like her Grandmother and I do not seem to be able to put her off so maybe I should stop trying. There is a long time to go before she has to decide, and of course there are plenty of academic hurdles before then. So I will just have to wait about this hurty knee until she gets there.