In his diary, for which he was being paid, a deal he had struck to finance his expedition to the South Pole, Ernest Shackleton, on the occasion of the final destruction of his only means of transport, and therefore his means of ever getting home from the South Pole, his ship Endeavour, wrote
27 October 1915. The end came at last about 5pm . she was doomed, no ship built by human hands could have withstood the strain . I ordered all hands on to the floe and as the floe near us was cracking we started to sledge all the gear .
How matter-of-fact is that. I couldn't help but feel that the newspaper which was paying for this was short-changed. Wasn't his heart breaking along with his ship? There's absolutely no inkling of it.*
This afternoon I witnessed the return of an eight-year-old boy from his day at school. I like this boy - he's articulate and clever, and has recently - September I guess - started guitar lessons. As that's my instrument, I have to be careful not to be over-enthusiastic and risk putting him off. I gather that he is picking it up like a good'un, and by his own self-motivation finds himself very far ahead of the pack. He greets Fridays with a song on his lips, primarily because it's music-lesson day. I asked how his day had been, and he told me, 'Fine'.
His mother, who was surprised to find herself pregnant at all, and staggered to find it was a boy, has since opined that any woman who wants to make a successful marriage really needs to bring up a small boy first, as it explains so much.
* There's always Beryl Bainbridge's The Birthday Boys, if you want heartbreak.
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4 comments:
There is that moment of such staggering overwhelm in which only the most mundane words will do...
Maybe it was because the Endurance wasn't fitted out with any Cath Kidston carpets. The loss of those to the ice floe might just have tipped him over the edge...
P got in first with what I was going to say. Hello anyway.
My apologies. The only thing going for this ill-thought-out, badly written excuse for a post is the happy synchronicity of the publication of an account of Ms Caroline Phillips' misfortune (as discussed here). Compare and contrast, anyone?
What I was aiming at was the inability of those with mismatched chromosomes to bother to express themselves, even when it is in their interest to do so.
All those lovely, lovely teaching staff at the good ole U of E are thinking, we awarded a degree? In English Literature? For this? Some of them accompanying themselves on their harps, obviously.
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