far away and long ago

so i'm off up in the deep west midlands countryside putting my parents' (and their parents') affairs to rest, sorting painstakingly through quite private histories -- which has to be done, and done right now, give or take -- and all around (a very long way off) the trumpets and alarums, triumphs and perils of easily the most serious popular challenge to power-as-she-has-become in my adult lifetime (1968 happened when i was 8: i wasn't able to contribute that time either)

street battles are for the young, and so to be honest is seizing the day, and i don't actually feel that bad that the most action i could take is OCCUPY THAT FIELD THERE: but it is odd sometimes (i feel a bit like brigadier pudding in gravity's rainbow -- NOT THAT BIT! -- carefully piecing together all the ways the world of 1920 could change, and finding as i approach halfway that it's already 1940 and everything did change, in unexpected ways)

in timely fashion this just popped up on itune:
"Yes, we speak of things that matter' With words that must be said,
"Can analysis be worthwhile?" "Is the theater really dead?"

It's on my laptop because my sister and I burned a lot of Simon and Garfunkel for mum and dad about eight years ago -- Parsley Sage Rosemary and Thyme was one the LPs they listened to a lot in 1968, their music as youngish adults:"7 O'Clock News/Silent Night" is probably where I first heard about the Vietnam War ("demonstrators were forcibly evicted from...")

just found the three-volume 1901 uniform edition of darwin that belonged to one of my great-grandfathers -- he was a vicar who lost his faith in late middle age, and spent his last few years in misery, convinced he'd stupidly wasted his life... just suddenly struck me that wrestling with darwin might have contributed to that (on the whole anglicans had no problem at all with evolution, e en then: the aspect they disliked was "nature red in tooth and claw")

Is it wrong for me to say that having just reading Hollingshurst's latest novel the whole idea of looking back into the past (in a UK context!) is on my mind so this feels weirdly synchronous...

aw mark, thanks for these lovely thoughts. Also, complete lol at the pudding stuff.