Reading a book

Hello everyone,

I was having a chat through Facebook yesterday with a friend of mine about issues with finding work, and I explained a bit about my current situation with the farm and labouring work and the law and all.  It seemed to me that since I'm having a little trouble figuring out what my next step in life should be, the best thing to do would be to look at the problem from a different angle.  Now, one thing that I've arranged to do is to try a session of "life coaching" that (for various reasons) I can get at the Government's expense.  But I also decided to try something from the "so crazy it might just work" column too.  I decided to try bibliomancy.

Bibliomancy is the idea that one can divine the future from books.  Since in another age I would have been classed as a peasant, I decided to try a book from an age when peasants were common: the Domesday Book.

Now, I should say that I don't think that a set of 900 year old tax and land title records is actually going to foretell my future: assuming that they had an actual message for me would probably be evidence of schizophrenia.  What I do wonder is whether they might suggest an idea I haven't considered before, or point up something I've already decided without really noticing.

 My copy of the Domesday Book runs to about 1500 pages, with entries in four columns containing about 10 entries each.  Through the magic of Facebook, I asked for suggestions of pages, columns and entries.

 

This is what my friends came up with (slightly edited for clarity) -

Diane (358 - 2 - 7): In 'Ossulstone' Hundred … Ranulph Flambard holds 3½ hides [a unit of land] of the bishop.  There is land for 5 ploughs.  There are in demesne 2 ploughs; and 3 ploughs among the villans [a peasant living in a village].  There are 14 bordars [peasants ranking below villans] on 1½ hides.  There is meadow for 2 ploughs and rendering 2 shillings [of tax]. There is no pasture.  There is a wood for making fences.  All together it is worth £4; when received, the same; in the time of King Edward [i.e. January 1066] 100 shillings. Godwine held this land under Bishop William.  He could not give it or sell it without the bishop’s permission in the time of King Edward.

Ammie (876 - 4 - 3): In Great Driffield … the king [holds] 4½ carucates [a measure of land].  In Great Kendale the king holds 6 carucates. In Eastburn the king holds 6 carucates.  In Kirkburn the king holds 5 carucates.

Madison (1472 - 3 - 9): In “Wimundahala” [there are] 2 free men [under obligation]to Burgheard with 12 acres.  [In the time of King Edward] as now half a plough. Then it was worth 2 shillings, now 3 shillings and 500 herrings.

Alix (1256 – 2 – 8): In Darmsden 25 free men held 1 carucate of land. St Æthelthryth had [a right to their service] in the time of King Edward.  Then 6 ploughs, now 2; 3 acres of meadow.  It is worth 20 shillings.  Roger Bigod holds it from the abbot because the abbot established a claim against him before the Bishop of St L. but before that he held it from the king.

So what can one make of this?

The land at Ossulstone was clearly prosperous, but Godwine was also stuck with it unless he was allowed to give it or sell it.  I guess the lesson is that prosperity can restrict one’s freedom, but also that accepting limitations on one’s freedom can lead to economic wellbeing.  None of this, of course, would be a surprise to anyone who has, you know, held a job or had a boss.  For myself, I’m willing to accept having my freedom cut back if it would get me nearer my vision of a white picket fence, basset hound and 2.4  children.  I guess that the feeling of being trapped comes when you lose (or give up) your freedom without getting something that you want in return.

The lands at Great Driffield, Great Kendale, Eastburn and Kirkburn belonged to the King and there was no need to record the identities, or even the presence, of past owners, labourers, or any other people.  The lesson I’d take from this is that if you let yourself be too tightly connected with someone with a “big” personality, reputation or the like, you may find your identity being swallowed up by them.  Again, not a big surprise after you’ve been exposed to people a bit.  I suppose that sometimes there may also be a temptation to allow your identity to be subsumed by someone else.

The land at Wimundahala seems to have changed its output before and after the Norman Conquest, such that it generated an extra shilling in tax and was yielding significant fisheries as well.  It’s no great insight, but a massive shake-up in the established order can be a source of prosperity.  Since extra revenue was being generated, presumably this means the unnamed free men were doing better as well, even if the name of the person to whom they owed obligations may have changed.  I suppose this supports the point of before about considering whether a reduction (at least an alteration?) of one’s liberty may still carry prosperity.

The lands at Darmsden seem to have undergone a ‘rationalisation’ before and after the Conquest, with a reduction in workforce or at least output.  It’s hard to see how this could have followed from the change of overlord from the king to the abbot.  So, a change of leadership (or at any rate changes further up the food chain) might not make a difference if you keep your eyes on your own job.  But, if you mess that up, you could be looking at much worse consequences for your quality of life.  No great insight there, but in this age of hyperpartisanship it’s clearly sensible to keep things in perspective.

Conclusion

Giving up some of one’s personal freedom to travel, to work at a profession of one’s choosing and to exercise and develop one’s own identity (and the like) may be an acceptable trade off, if what you get in exchange is what you really want.  The feeling of being trapped comes when you find you’ve given them up for something less than what you want.  That, more than any other question of politics or economics or anything else, is probably the key to happiness in life.

Trees and gates

Hi everyone,

A beautiful warm autumn day here - so nice to have a chance to thaw out!

Michael and I spent the morning over at his place. The original plan was to go and rehang a couple of gates, but we got sidetracked by gardening work.  First, cutting down a cypress tree in the yard, which went from this ...

... to this:

There was another tree taken out, and also one planted.  In the big blow of wind last week a sheet of iron had come loose on the house roof (repairs were effected) and a couple had come off the shearing shed roof altogether.

Repairs to the shearing shed will be effected tomorrow.

We eventually got to the gates. One of them, I noted, is an old "Sunshine" type made by the McKay works under the name HV McKay Pty Ltd (which puts the date of manufacture between 1921 and 1930) [http://www.search.asic.gov.au/cgi-bin/gns030c?acn=004092684&juris=9&hdtext=ACN&srchsrc=1] Yep, I'm this exciting all the time!

In the event we need a few more parts to lift the gates, so we'll return tomorrow with them and also the gear to do the roof repairs I mentioned.

Returned to the farm here for lunch. I was interested to note that Pepsi we're sponsoring the cricket World Cup this year - hadn't noticed that before.

Most of the afternoon was spent splitting firewood.  Gave the dog a good long walk and also fitted in a ride in the evening. 

More tomorrow.

Today in Short

Hi everyone,

Short post because my battery is nearly cactus.  It's been a quiet day.  Shopping for groceries in town in the morning, almost all at the Marketplace or in one of the larger stores.  

While in town I got a message telling me I'd not got a job at Würth Australia either. Sigh.

Back at the farm by 1:30.  Typed a longish blogpost for a linkup then took the dog for a long walk.

Watched my interview on Weeknights. Pleased it went better than I thought!

SES training in the evening (rooftop safety). I got rusty!

Home by 11pm. Dinner and bed.

Wednesday Word: Challenging

Linking up with Deb Runs for Word Wednesday.  Today's word is "Challenging".

Maybe because we're in the midst of a chilly blast here in the Goulburn Valley and the sky is grey outside, I'm wondering if there's a point where a challenge can go bad.  Two things come to mind.

The first comes directly from running and relates most closely to it.  I've now completed three marathons (Shepparton, Melbourne, Great Ocean Road) but don't think I'll be able to do a fourth.  One of my knees is a bit problematic and when I staggered over the finish line in the third one twelve months ago, I was pretty certain that the joint wouldn't be able to manage another.  On one hand, I'm kind of OK with that because I've since fallen in love with the half-marathon distance and find I'm able to discover new and exciting challenges of speed in that distance.  Certainly, being able to aim for a PB with some chance of hitting it is an intense pleasure that's harder to get with the near-pure endurance of the marathon distance.  But, I find myself missing the knowledge that I'm part of that special breed of runners who are regular marathoners, and to have another shot at that challenge almost seems worth risking totalling my knee for.

The second is that challenges can be destructive if your reach always exceeds your grasp.  Regular readers will know that I went to one of Victoria's most competitive schools.  The competition there became especially intense in your final year, when your final score and university placement are at stake.  The challenge set before students was to achieve the perfect score of 99.95, and it was expected that no effort, and almost no waking moment, should be spared in that endeavour (I do not exaggerate when I say that a score of between 98.00 and 99.00 was viewed as very second rate, and my final score - 96.95 - was seen as positively contemptible).  In this case, the challenge - a goal almost unattainable - was positively destructive because it inculcated into many of us (including me) a dangerously black-and-white, perfectionistic, fault-finding view of ourselves.  It's taken me a long time, and a lot of failures (for which I'm actually somewhat grateful), to get that habit of thought under control.  Perhaps challenges should be treated as equally about the journey as the goal.

On the whole, I think that any challenge maybe needs to be undertaken with one eye on St Paul's admonition:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

If a challenge is making you a person who could not use that description of yourself, it's a strong suggestion it's leading you astray.

Interviews ... Not for a job.

Hi everyone,

Another day of not seemingly achieving anything today.  Mildly annoying.

The day started with setting up the spike harrows to put over the ploughed paddock, and the giving the dog a short walk.  At about 10am I had a shave and a cleanup and put in my SES uniform to go to Tatura for the interview I'd agreed to do with the local Channel 10 Weeknights for National Volunteers Week.

I have to say, the interview wasn't a colossal success.  The journo was a lovely young lady who didn't ask anything unreasonable; however I learned that even though I can talk like a 5'10" Chatty Cathy when I'm in court, when I'm in front if a camera I gibber like the village idiot.  Lord knows what it'll look like on TV.  Truth be told, I'm a little worried about someone seeing it and knowing where to find me: one of the drawbacks of being a litigation lawyer in a regional area is that you share a community with a certain number of people who you know hate your guts.

After the interview I went to Shepparton for a few things including the Weekly Times and the local paper.  I saw something that kind of startled me at the entry to a payday-lender's offices.  This is their doorway -

Right at the bottom of the door, in the most inconspicuous place possible, was this sign -

Some businesses are truly vultures.

While I was in town I bought a couple of cucumbers and some dried figs and called them lunch. By then it was about 3pm and I attended to some personal matters as the afternoon wore on.  The dog and I took a walk in the setting sun; it was just too cold to run or cycle.

Not much else to add.  Weather is getting cold here.  >sigh< Not looking forward to another long winter in the Goulburn Valley!

A Book-Tuesday Linkup!

I haven't been doing much that's exciting today and I thought a book-themed post might be interesting instead.

 

 

In the long-ago I had a fairly large collection of books - at a rough guess, a couple of thousand.  It's kind of a family thing: one of my brothers-in-law has said that you can always tell when you go into a Tuck home because the bookshelves outnumber all the other furniture combined.  The ex also loved

reading, so in the before-time our house kind of resembled the library from Beauty and the Beast -

 

 

(OK, I exaggerate, but you get the idea). She now has about 95% of my books.  I'm not particularly upset about that: I'd read all but a few of them and if she has them, Grace and Rachel will eventually get to read them too.  The only ones I'd ever seek to get back are a couple of first editions and one or two that have sentimental value.  Be that as it may, my personal library now looks like (well, is) this -

 

 

I love to read, and so I also took a picture of my bedside table with its mass of books, journals and magazines on it.

 

 

I wrote a list of the books in that heap (including two that were out of shot) and found that that particular pile consisted of the following -

• American Bar Association Journal (2015), vol. 101(4)
• Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice (2009)
• American Historical Review (2014), vol. 119(4)
• CFA/SES, Road Rescue Learning Manual (2005)
• American Historical Review (2014), vol. 119(5)
• Clive James, The Meaning of Recognition (2006)
• American Historical Review (2015), vol. 120(1)
• Commerical Transport Litigation Committee, Damages (2014)
• Entertainment & Sports Lawyer (2015), vol. 31(4)
• G Fletcher and S. Sheppard, American Law in a Global Context (2005)
• American Rifleman (2015), vol. 163(4)
• Ken Blackwell and Ken Klukowski, The Blueprint (2010)
• Kevin Gutzman, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution (2007)
• Law Institute Journal (2015) vol. 89(4)
• Mark Levin, Men in Black (2005)
• Memorial Hall Foundation Newsletter (Feb. 2015)
• Perspectives on History (2015) vol. 53(3)
• PJ O'Rourke, The CEO of the Sofa (2001)
• Rebecca Fraser, The Story of Britain (2003)
• The Young Lawyer (2015), vol. 15(2)
• Tort, Trial and Insurance Practice Law Journal (2015), vol. 50(2)

Setting them out like that suggested a few things to me.

 

First, the law occupies much more of my reading time that I'd have guessed it did. On the other hand, a fair bit of the legal literature I have overlaps with political (or semi-political) writers like Gutzman and Sen.  There's some method in that apparent madness: My strong instinct is that the next American presidential election will encompass some powerful arguments about sovereignty and transnational law (especially if Ted Cruz's campaign takes off), and I'd like to have some idea of the lines of argument before they're made.

 

Second, I clearly don't have much time for fiction.  This isn't really a surprise:  At a rough guess, since high school I've read maybe three works of fiction, two of them in the last two years.  One of these was The Absolutist, the conclusion of which I found fairly unsatisfying even though the book itself was well crafted.  Its strongest merit was its unsparing description of the conditions of warfare on the western front in the First World War, which gave the lie to Ron Horrigan's shameful claim that “Englishmen have always been well prepared to die bravely for their country just as long as there is a certain amount of comfort associated with the whole thing” (1). The second book, The Silmarillion, had more of an impact on me. J.R.R. Tolkien's description of a world left to wallow in trauma by an almost-criminally negligent god and demigods left me scrutinising - and nearly abandoning - my own faith for nearly a year after I started to compare it to our own world.  The Silmarillion was initially drafted between 1914 and 1937, and seems to reflect Tolkien's own experience of the world-shattering agony of the First World War; maybe doubt of divine providence was part of its point (2).  I think my aversion to fiction is partly a reaction to literature itself.  For one thing, writers of literature seem amazingly self-regarding: there is some bizarre belief that their books should be published even though no known audience wants to buy them.  And the genre's chief pleasure has been described in terms that border on self-gratificatory -

Have you ever wanted to savor a meal because you’ve never tasted anything so good? Well, if you’re new to literary fiction, or can never seem to “get into it,” this is how you should try approaching it.

Think of the book as a meal with intricate scents, flavors and textures that you can’t quite recognize unless you spend a little more time with it, and give it some undivided attention. Because, trust me, sitting down a little longer than usual, to enjoy your meal, can be liberating, especially if accompanied by a great glass of red.

Sensory information is, more often than not, a huge focus in literary works. Literary fiction, unfortunately, gets a bad wrap for all the description it uses. This makes me sad because I adore it. I never used to. Until I realized how much there is to appreciate.

I’m convinced that some people think literary fiction is boring because they have the wrong expectations. Most literary works are not heavy on plot. It exists, but it is not usually the main focus. Primarily, the focus is on character and theme. So you cannot expect to pick up a literary novel and become so caught up in the story that you can’t bear to put it down. But so what? Each reading experience should be different, and inspire you in different ways. They should trigger questions, stimulate learning curves and general intrigue for the new. So, before you dismiss the idea of picking up another literary novel, because you didn’t get the thrilling ride of the last suspense you read, try taking a different approach.

 

It's like hearing somebody say, with no discernible sense of self-parody, ...

 

 

Third, everything I'm currently reading was written post-2000.  That's probably a good thing where the journals are concerned.  After all, they're meant to be the latest and best scholarship.  But it occurs to me that I should add some more 'classic' writing to the mix too.

 

What are you reading at the moment? And why?  Share your thoughts in the

comments, or write your own blogpost and link back to it so we can share ideas!

 

==============================

 

(1) Ron Horrigan, ‘The battle of Romani’, Euroa Gazette, 24 April 2012, p. 2.

 

(2) David Platt, 'Tolkien: conservative advocate', Australian Financial Review, 25 January 2013, p. 3 (Review section). 

How to call a cat

Hi everyone,

It's been a good day today: not especially cold, although the weather is supposed to close in over the next day or so.

My own day got off to a good start with a skype-date with Grace and Rachel.  They were playing a Princess Sophia-themed version of snakes and ladders when I called and they play so nicely together. It was for all the world like being there. It doesn't get any better than that!  After they'd finished playing the board game, Rachel wanted to watch something on TV and Grace and I played some kind of game where we were in a pet shop and she was a guinea pig and I was a rabbit.  I said that I knew how to make a noise like a rabbit and went and got my fox whistle - it makes a sound like a rabbit in distress (I didn't tell Grace that bit) which will tend to attract foxes.

Well, I no sooner blew it than Tom the cat came running to see if there was a rabbit to be hunted in the living room!  I have to tell you, he looked cranky when there wasn't one to be found.  Grace was thrilled and I've now promised to get a fox whistle for each of her and Rachel.  No doubt their uncle Jerry, a keen outdoorsman, will approve!

After lunch the old boy and I went over to the Rushworth property to pick up the seeder so to sow the paddock he was ploughing while I was at that course.  We stopped for fuel at the servo at Wahring ...

... then continued on by way of Murchison.  Getting the seeder in the tray of the truck was an adventure.  First we had to lift it (precariously, in my view) using straps across the tynes of the tractor: 

We fastened it down with a combination of straps and chains.  I wasn't rapt by it: every time one thing was tightened, others came loose.

This was why we had to stop twice on the way back to tighten the straps in particular down.  Once was in the timber before Rushworth -

- and the other was near the railway line at Murchison East.

Not going to lie: it was good to get back to the Casa and warm up by the fire with a glass of red. Earlyish night tonight: I've been tired all day.

Oh, and purely because it's a cute thing, but I thought I'd share the bookmark I'm using at present: a brass clip that looks like a hand that I bought at the National Gallery years ago.  I'd forgotten how fond I was of it! 

Hope all is well - see you tomorrow!