TENNIS: Novak Djokovic and BOOK REVIEW
Jan. 15th, 2022 02:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllThis week, I’ve been following the twists and turns of Novak Djokovic’s visa problems and attempt to play in the Australian Open. I won’t try to record them all or my views on them, and the story isn’t done. At present, he’s waiting to appeal the Australian government’s decision to revoke his visa. I don’t agree with his anti-vaccination views, and I don’t think he’s learned the right lessons from the Adria tour debacle. If winning the Australian Open, a slam he’s been so commanding at, and surpassing Federer and Nadal’s slam totals was so important, he should have done everything in his power to make that possible and impressed the same on everyone working for him. Based on what I’ve read, I think the rival players who say he has instead got several questions to answer are right. If he does successfully appeal against the executive’s decision to remove him from Australia for the next three years and gets to step back on a tennis court in Melbourne – a big if - he should expect to be booed, which is what I thought when this story first broke, although we’ve heard a lot from his supporters at various points since then,
If he were to play, even though he’s clearly had a difficult preparation, I wouldn’t put it past him to use all of that as fuel to help him win again. Whether one of his old foes or the upcoming players could have beat him had none of this happened, I don’t know. (Murray must be heartened to get to a final!) I also don’t know anything about the women who are playing in the Australian Open, Is Osaka playing? Could one of the scores of other Grand Slam winners win it or will it be another unexpected winner a la Raducanu? They all believe anything is possible.
I meant to reread ‘Susan Pulls The Strings’ but I couldn’t find my copy (it’s probably in the house, but I can’t be bothered to remove all the furniture I’d need to to find it.) Fortunately, the following was on top f my ‘to be read’ pile:
First Term at Ash Grove: Mabel Esther Allan, Blackie 1988
Reading this book, I felt a slight pang that I hadn’t come across it when it was first published, when I was reading some of the ‘Drina’ books that Allan wrote under the pen name ‘Jean Estoril’ and close in age to the new pupils going to Ash Grove for the first time. I think I’d have related to bookish heroine Samantha Padgett, who is going up to a huge secondary school after being much feted at her small primary. These days, more attention is paid to easing that transition, which must be a positive thing; here, Sam, has the dubious advantage of having an older brother and friends who attend Ash Grove. But when, at the start of the book, still during the sweltering holidays, big brother Pete warns her that she’ll be a small fish in a big pond, the dream Sam has carried of being at Ash Grove becomes a more daunting prospect. Worse, from her perspective during her first days, his prophecy is true. The clever girl, whose creative ideas and personality made her quite a self-assured little person (almost a madam) is now just one of over a thousand pupils at Ash Grove, and it’s not an easy first term for her.
So, this book was aimed at that generation leaving primary school and starting secondary school – it’s part of a longer series, and I think the publishers must have wanted to capture the readers among Grange Hill’s viewers. It wouldn’t tax readers of that age, Sam sometimes uses long words, as you’d expect of a child who reads like an adult and better than some, and the events recorded in the book would be recognisable to a lot of British children, plus is plausible - more plausible than Grange Hill would get to be.
I really enjoyed it all these decades on, because a storyteller is a storyteller, and Allan, a very well-established and experienced writer by the time she wrote this, knew what she was at. Decades away from my own experiences, I was reminded more of those days when you wore a new uniform and had to learn to do up a tie in my case, got exercise books and stood in the front row of school Assemblies, in a way that mostly doesn’t happen when I read the children’s books I post about. As ever, I appreciated the writer’s perceptiveness about human nature and grounded story.
Sam, her cat Stripes, her brother and parents live in a flat in one of a group of tower blocks in ‘Gradely’, an imaginary part of what’s recognisably Liverpool. There isn’t that much money, Sam spends her five pences on books, mainly. Allan draws a picture of a mostly working class community where work is increasingly hard to come by – some of the children attending the school are squatting in old houses, there’s a local wasteland where the kids can play sport, but not really a park. The large comprehensive school offers opportunities for the children, or most of them, with its order, lessons, sports and clubs.
Sam is in a slightly different position to that majority, for she was offered a scholarship to a posh school, but turned it down, because she had a special feeling for Ash Grove, having seen it built, sneaked in and even met the friendly headmaster before. But now that she enters by right, looking closer to nine than 11, she’s going walking into the domain of the big kids. Already used, if not reconciled, to being one of the youngest of the ‘Almond House Gang’ along with her friend Jon, Sam has to contend with fourteen-year-old Pete being particularly dismissive of ‘the kids’. Sam is becoming aware – as they all are - that they’re growing apart, as some of the older ones become more serious about studying, while others, like Pete, definitely do not.
But there are even bigger kids at Ash Grove, almost grown-ups of seventeen, and Sam rather resents the fact that first years have few privileges like being able to go to the library whenever they please, and that the sixth formers run things as a matter of course. One can see why a tiny girl like her would put some of their backs up, but she manages to make a particular enemy of Jess Lumb, who all but bullies her.
Allan has a lot of fun critiquing some of the codes of conduct of the boarding school stories that Sam devours along with books about local history and of poetry. There is an order mark system that is ripe for abuse (though an unfair prefect picking on the extraordinary new girl is a trope one finds repeatedly in said books). Sam definitely doesn’t believe in the honour code, and argues her case (it depends on the hearer as to how well that goes down) and that’s shown to be very much a good thing in an emergency. Allan even cheekily drops in a reference to a book of hers about a progressive school, where all pupils have an equal voice.
At Ash Grove, little first formers are expected to be unimportant among the massed hordes of pupils, nearly all older and bigger and strange. Sam isn’t the only one who finds the first few weeks overwhelming, but she’s slower to settle down. For Sam is an extraordinary new girl. She’s been helping Pete with his schoolwork for years, and the silly boy isn’t sure whether to resent her for having the brains to do so, which is why he made the stinging, if true, comment at the start of the book, or beg her to carry on, even as her homework load has increased. (I wasn’t meant to wonder at Mrs Padgett’s fidelity, she’s written as a sensible housewife who loves her family, and is more worried about Sam’s happiness and health than her getting on, but Sam is a bit of a cuckoo, and the polar opposite of Pete.
Less flippantly, Sam’s difficulties raise the question of whether a large comp that has to serve all kinds is the best place for a more able and talented pupil, in the jargon, and a child bursting with potential. Allan’s answer is ’Yes.’ Sam gets her just desserts slowly, and learns to get on with a broader range of people, people who didn’t know her from before. It’s easy to infer that she will be one of the sixth form prefects in time, but the question is aired thoroughly.
It doesn’t help that Sam’s form teacher is unsympathetic (Allan provides the reader with a few glimpses of her home life, as she does for other characters. Overall, the book isn’t very flattering about Liverpudlian husbands in the 1980s!) Yet, Sam has a good brain, good intentions and when given a chance, proves that she isn’t a minnow or a non-entity.
I sympathised with her in some ways, even empathised with her, although I didn’t grow up in a high-rise flat in a city and my secondary school was half the size of Ash Grove.
I had minor quibbles: all the towers and streets in Gradely seemed to be named after trees, which felt generic. There’s an attempt to make the dialogue authentic by contractions and whatnot, but it was always ‘rotten’ this and ‘rotten’ that. I’m not suggesting that Allan should have used swearwords, although I suspect some might have been used in Gradely’s real counterparts, but sometimes the slang wasn’t entirely convincing. (I rememeber ‘minging’ being used a lot in my neck of the woods to express disgust, for example.) There could also have been just a bit more texture in the descriptions. I’m super picky here, Allan is good on visual descriptions and the impact of the weather and atmospheric conditions on everyone’s mood, but not so good on scent and sound. There was a sense that the writer was imagining herself in that situation, instead of total authenticity. But then, on the other hand, one of Sam’s neighbours has a Welsh connection, which would be true of Liverpool (historically the capital city of north Wales), so I reiteraty I’m being super picky, when it was a satisfying read.
If he were to play, even though he’s clearly had a difficult preparation, I wouldn’t put it past him to use all of that as fuel to help him win again. Whether one of his old foes or the upcoming players could have beat him had none of this happened, I don’t know. (Murray must be heartened to get to a final!) I also don’t know anything about the women who are playing in the Australian Open, Is Osaka playing? Could one of the scores of other Grand Slam winners win it or will it be another unexpected winner a la Raducanu? They all believe anything is possible.
I meant to reread ‘Susan Pulls The Strings’ but I couldn’t find my copy (it’s probably in the house, but I can’t be bothered to remove all the furniture I’d need to to find it.) Fortunately, the following was on top f my ‘to be read’ pile:
First Term at Ash Grove: Mabel Esther Allan, Blackie 1988
Reading this book, I felt a slight pang that I hadn’t come across it when it was first published, when I was reading some of the ‘Drina’ books that Allan wrote under the pen name ‘Jean Estoril’ and close in age to the new pupils going to Ash Grove for the first time. I think I’d have related to bookish heroine Samantha Padgett, who is going up to a huge secondary school after being much feted at her small primary. These days, more attention is paid to easing that transition, which must be a positive thing; here, Sam, has the dubious advantage of having an older brother and friends who attend Ash Grove. But when, at the start of the book, still during the sweltering holidays, big brother Pete warns her that she’ll be a small fish in a big pond, the dream Sam has carried of being at Ash Grove becomes a more daunting prospect. Worse, from her perspective during her first days, his prophecy is true. The clever girl, whose creative ideas and personality made her quite a self-assured little person (almost a madam) is now just one of over a thousand pupils at Ash Grove, and it’s not an easy first term for her.
So, this book was aimed at that generation leaving primary school and starting secondary school – it’s part of a longer series, and I think the publishers must have wanted to capture the readers among Grange Hill’s viewers. It wouldn’t tax readers of that age, Sam sometimes uses long words, as you’d expect of a child who reads like an adult and better than some, and the events recorded in the book would be recognisable to a lot of British children, plus is plausible - more plausible than Grange Hill would get to be.
I really enjoyed it all these decades on, because a storyteller is a storyteller, and Allan, a very well-established and experienced writer by the time she wrote this, knew what she was at. Decades away from my own experiences, I was reminded more of those days when you wore a new uniform and had to learn to do up a tie in my case, got exercise books and stood in the front row of school Assemblies, in a way that mostly doesn’t happen when I read the children’s books I post about. As ever, I appreciated the writer’s perceptiveness about human nature and grounded story.
Sam, her cat Stripes, her brother and parents live in a flat in one of a group of tower blocks in ‘Gradely’, an imaginary part of what’s recognisably Liverpool. There isn’t that much money, Sam spends her five pences on books, mainly. Allan draws a picture of a mostly working class community where work is increasingly hard to come by – some of the children attending the school are squatting in old houses, there’s a local wasteland where the kids can play sport, but not really a park. The large comprehensive school offers opportunities for the children, or most of them, with its order, lessons, sports and clubs.
Sam is in a slightly different position to that majority, for she was offered a scholarship to a posh school, but turned it down, because she had a special feeling for Ash Grove, having seen it built, sneaked in and even met the friendly headmaster before. But now that she enters by right, looking closer to nine than 11, she’s going walking into the domain of the big kids. Already used, if not reconciled, to being one of the youngest of the ‘Almond House Gang’ along with her friend Jon, Sam has to contend with fourteen-year-old Pete being particularly dismissive of ‘the kids’. Sam is becoming aware – as they all are - that they’re growing apart, as some of the older ones become more serious about studying, while others, like Pete, definitely do not.
But there are even bigger kids at Ash Grove, almost grown-ups of seventeen, and Sam rather resents the fact that first years have few privileges like being able to go to the library whenever they please, and that the sixth formers run things as a matter of course. One can see why a tiny girl like her would put some of their backs up, but she manages to make a particular enemy of Jess Lumb, who all but bullies her.
Allan has a lot of fun critiquing some of the codes of conduct of the boarding school stories that Sam devours along with books about local history and of poetry. There is an order mark system that is ripe for abuse (though an unfair prefect picking on the extraordinary new girl is a trope one finds repeatedly in said books). Sam definitely doesn’t believe in the honour code, and argues her case (it depends on the hearer as to how well that goes down) and that’s shown to be very much a good thing in an emergency. Allan even cheekily drops in a reference to a book of hers about a progressive school, where all pupils have an equal voice.
At Ash Grove, little first formers are expected to be unimportant among the massed hordes of pupils, nearly all older and bigger and strange. Sam isn’t the only one who finds the first few weeks overwhelming, but she’s slower to settle down. For Sam is an extraordinary new girl. She’s been helping Pete with his schoolwork for years, and the silly boy isn’t sure whether to resent her for having the brains to do so, which is why he made the stinging, if true, comment at the start of the book, or beg her to carry on, even as her homework load has increased. (I wasn’t meant to wonder at Mrs Padgett’s fidelity, she’s written as a sensible housewife who loves her family, and is more worried about Sam’s happiness and health than her getting on, but Sam is a bit of a cuckoo, and the polar opposite of Pete.
Less flippantly, Sam’s difficulties raise the question of whether a large comp that has to serve all kinds is the best place for a more able and talented pupil, in the jargon, and a child bursting with potential. Allan’s answer is ’Yes.’ Sam gets her just desserts slowly, and learns to get on with a broader range of people, people who didn’t know her from before. It’s easy to infer that she will be one of the sixth form prefects in time, but the question is aired thoroughly.
It doesn’t help that Sam’s form teacher is unsympathetic (Allan provides the reader with a few glimpses of her home life, as she does for other characters. Overall, the book isn’t very flattering about Liverpudlian husbands in the 1980s!) Yet, Sam has a good brain, good intentions and when given a chance, proves that she isn’t a minnow or a non-entity.
I sympathised with her in some ways, even empathised with her, although I didn’t grow up in a high-rise flat in a city and my secondary school was half the size of Ash Grove.
I had minor quibbles: all the towers and streets in Gradely seemed to be named after trees, which felt generic. There’s an attempt to make the dialogue authentic by contractions and whatnot, but it was always ‘rotten’ this and ‘rotten’ that. I’m not suggesting that Allan should have used swearwords, although I suspect some might have been used in Gradely’s real counterparts, but sometimes the slang wasn’t entirely convincing. (I rememeber ‘minging’ being used a lot in my neck of the woods to express disgust, for example.) There could also have been just a bit more texture in the descriptions. I’m super picky here, Allan is good on visual descriptions and the impact of the weather and atmospheric conditions on everyone’s mood, but not so good on scent and sound. There was a sense that the writer was imagining herself in that situation, instead of total authenticity. But then, on the other hand, one of Sam’s neighbours has a Welsh connection, which would be true of Liverpool (historically the capital city of north Wales), so I reiteraty I’m being super picky, when it was a satisfying read.
