PBOTD 10th November: Christine Pullein-Thompson - We Rode to the Sea

-
Today we backtrack somewhat, to the first solo book Christine Pullein-Thompson wrote. Fortunately critics Cadogan and Craig, whom I quoted in yesterday's PBOTD, appear not to have read this book, which is fortunate as it is an infinitely worse effort than the Chill Valley series, which they loathed.


Unlike her sisters, Christine didn't stick with what she knew when she struck out on her own. She wrote about chaotic holiday adventure, with escaped prisoners. We Rode to the Sea (1948) opens in a whirl of chaotic activity on a train from Glasgow to the Highlands as the Macgregor family journey to Fort Frederick to start their riding holiday. After mangling an unfortunate fellow passenger’s knitting to a heart-breaking extent, the children set themselves problems from the start by leaving their map on the train. Nevertheless, they launch forth, mapless, into the Highlands, get lost, battle with their recalcitrant camping gear and then find out two German prisoners have escaped. The Macgregors decide they must catch them. Eventually, of course, they do.

I found this book tremendously difficult to read as an adult. It was never a particular favourite of mine as a child, though I did have a copy. The action all happens in a breakneck whirl, but it isn't enough to overcome her characters’ irritating foibles, of which they have plenty. Their own “Scottish obsession” takes the form of endless digs at the English; ironically, bearing in mind the family live in Glasgow, lowland Scots are not favoured either.  The family are prone to peculiarly Scottish exclamations and having read the poetry of William Aytoun, spout it frequently and curse “by the blighted hopes of Scotland”.

“Oh, losh, don’t say we’ve lost it,” exclaimed Christina. “It would be too awful, after all we told Daddy about being practically grown up and quite capable of looking after ourselves.”
“I believe you’re right, Hugheena,” said Alister. “I did have it in the train. Now what, by the blighted hopes of Scotland, could I have done with it?”


The adventure itself is weak. Why the two escaped Germans are such a danger is never satisfactorily explained; they are simply faceless examples of convenient evil. Being dashing is confused with enthusiastic ineptitude: the Macgregor family are horribly prone to wishing, after their latest disaster, that they had thought ahead, and then promptly fail to do so in their next crisis. Any other child of the 1970s will probably remember the Some Mothers Do 'Ave Em series, in which a spectacularly inept Frank Spencer lurches from disaster to disaster, always well-meaning; never learning. I found it absolutely unwatchable: there was no dramatic tension at all - you always knew it would go wrong. We Rode to the Sea alas produces the same feeling in me.




~  0  ~

More on Christine Pullein-Thompson

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rollkur and the blue tongue

-
I've been meaning to write about this all week, but reading the exclusive in Horse and Hound about the controversy tipped me over the edge. For my non-horsy readers, rollkur is a training/warming up technique used by some dressage riders. It basically involves riding the horse with its jaw pulled in virtually to its chest, in order to increase suppleness. Patrik Kittel , a Swedish competitor in Odense was videoed riding his horse in this way. If you watch the video , you'll see the horse's tongue hanging out - blue. It takes a while before the rider notices this. When he does, he stops, puts the horse's tongue back in, and carries on. There are two things which bother me about this. Firstly, I am fully aware large sections of the dressage world, and some of its brighest stars, consider rollkur perfectly ok, but the FEI guidelines state this practice should only be for short periods, allowing the horse to rest. Patrick Kittel apparently rode the horse for two hou
Read more

Archibald, don't eat the bedclothes

-
Image
My friend Louise sent me this picture today. It's from a children's book with the rather wince-making title For The Wee Ones. I thought, when I read that (because I read the message before I looked at the picture) that the picture was going to be a typical winsome production from the school of artists who think (or who are paid to think) that the child is a thing sent from God and a blissful thing. They had obviously never met a child, and certainly not mine. I should have known Louise better. The artist responsible for Archibald, don't eat the bedclothes slipped this one past the editors. Just look at the poor, broken Mother Rabbit. She knows she has not the faintest chance of being listened to, and poor thing, she is stooped in the way of a mother to whom this is just the lastest in a long line of horror; with nothing good to come. And Archibald is obviously the spawn of the Devil. Just look at those eyes. He'll have the bed after he's finished the bedclothes
Read more

Dick Sparrow - 40 Horse Hitch, and Neil Dimmock's 46 Percherons

-
Image
Here's a clip of Dick Sparrow driving 40 horses. It's an amazing sight, particularly when the shot changes to show the team from the rear and you get the great incongruity of modern American corporate architecture as a background to the wagon and horses. I love the anticipation in the video: the sense of something amazing being just round the corner is palpable. Thanks to Christina Wilsdon for telling me about this world record 46 Percheron hitch (alas just stills) but you get the idea.
Read more