In 1989 we visited New York for the first time staying with friends and taking a couple of tours to the hinterland. In those days it was possible to take enough kit on a plane with you to go camping, although we had ordered a new tent from L L Bean to be delivered to our friend's apartment. So we packed our rental car and headed off to the South.
As we went down the New Jersey Turnpike we started thinking about the things we had forgotten including a hammer and cutlery. Fortunately this coincided with turning off the 12-lane and seeing an army surplus store which supplied our needs. This included a serrated knife which was claimed would last forever and cut anything. Perhaps not forever but 34 years later the knife was still cutting away finely, until the blade separated from the handle. Bugger.
I decided that a replacement knife would be a nice Christmas present for Frances, to accompany the glass vase she suggested. Both were acquired and well received on the day. It was a close run thing for a TARFU (Totally And Royally ....) as Frances had decided that a new knife would make a nice present for me - but hadn't been able to find a purveyor of same in Merimbula (unlike me, she didn't try Home Hardware😁😁).
So Frances checked out the books in the Church Op Shop in Mallacoota and did Very Well. She acquired 2 tomes both of which were very interesting, in different ways. Here follows commentary on the books.
"My Penguin Year" by Lindsay McCrae
This is about a year spent in the Antarctic filming an Emperor Penguin colony for the BBC. The film which resulted became part of the
BBC series "Dynasties". Although the author makes no claims to being a writer - he is a film-maker - it is a very well written book with several story lines as in addition to the penguin story, and derring-do on the ice, his wife is about 2 months pregnant when he leaves home in England. He doesn't make too much fuss about the home front but it does bubble along.
His final paragraph quotes Apsley Cherry-Garrard's conclusion to "The worst journey in the World" about the Scott expedition:
"Take it all in all, I do not believe anyone on Earth has a worse time than an Emperor Penguin."
This is quite appropriate as one of the Scott expedition's scientific objectives was to collect some embryos of Emperor Penguins. It also gives much food for thought contrasting the conditions faced by the Scott expedition and McCrae's time. A few contrasts:
- McCrae spoke with his wife just about every day over the internet. Scott's expedition were totally isolated once their ship left.
- McCrae travelled around on snowmobiles fitted with GPS tracking technology. Scott used dogs, or man-hauled sledges and navigated by dead reckoning.
- The base for McCrae was a high-tech German camp with all mod cons to which they returned each night. The accommodation for Scott's expedition was a wooden cabin they built themselves. When going to the Penguin Colony, and of course to the Pole, Scott's people slept in tents erected on the ice in heavy blizzards.
- No-one died on McCrae's trip. He makes quite a few comments about the medical facilities available in the base camp.
Very much recommended as a good read and a lot of useful interesting information about Penguins!
"Bagman to Swagman" by Alistair McAlpine
Very different in just about every way from the Penguin book. The
author is (or since 2014 , was) a very wealthy British businessman, part of the
famous construction family. Rather than a tightly edited narrative weaving three stories together there are many strands to the McAlpine story and they intermingle in a somewhat incoherent fashion. While McAlpine worked closely with - and greatly admired - Thatcher his writing style continually reminded me of Boris Johnson (although I suspect McAlpine was far more competent in every respect than BoZo).
Possibly McAlpine is a Renaissance Man with many interests and abilities. Possibly he is a dilettante, flitting from interest to interest as the fancy takes him?
I found his habit of not completing narrative elements (ie starts off a paragraph on point A, then heads into point B and then restarts another paragraph on point C - or sometimes point Z - without completing point A) somewhat annoying. However many of the stories are either amusing or interesting or both. I had not read the wikipedia article linked above before reading the book and it gives some food for thought.
I suspect the book needs re-reading, knowing where it ends up, and where he ends up. There is also a lot of interest in his views about Broome and the Kimberly. He has a section about politicians which is intriguing in the range of people he admires (or less so in some cases). He is generally not negative about individuals (making an exception for Alan Bond who he loathes) but as a class hates bureaucrats!
An interesting read for those interested in the North-West of Australia and the 'movers-and-shakers' of the last quarter of the 20th Century
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