If You Can Get It

Currently reading Nice Work by David Lodge. (This is not the cover of my edition but it’s a good picture from the TV series). This was prompted by Andrew Marr’s assertion that he has read War and Peace 15 times though I am afraid I can only muster four goes for any novel. I suppose I might have read RJ Unstead’s History of Britain more than that but I was young.

Anyway, Nice Work does a great job of self-reference if only fleetingly when the author bemoans the fact that he is describing the character of one of his creations while she denies the existence of character itself. All the reference to de-construction of novels and post-structuralism leads you into believing that you are reading a book without plot and character when in fact it is so well designed and plotted that nothing is up for grabs. I first read it when I was in the midst of my transfer from college to factory and the relevance of this has only hit me now.

However, I have not forgotten Mr. Dawkins if only because the new Guinness advert reminded me of him. Apologies if you have seen it. It follows a trio of Guinness drinkers de-evolving very believably back through human history, pre-history and all the stages between now and when we crawled out of the water. They end up as mudskippers who don’t like the taste of the water. The standard caption about good things and waiting appears and in an instant, the whole strange show is clear. I wonder if the idea of running it backwards was there from the start or whether the filmmakers suddenly saw it would work better that way? Of course, running it forwards would have left showing the product until the end but either way it was brilliantly made with a great punch line. Back to the standard of the surfers/white horses again.

Nature Notes:-

There was a gang of crows mobbing a kestrel over the car park this morning. I stood and watched them for a while but they got too far away to see the outcome. It made me wonder who would actually win if it came to beak versus claw. My dad would know.