Reading Out of Context. OCCT Discussion Group 2017, Trinity Term W4

Transcription

1 Reading Out of Context OCCT Discussion Group 2017, Trinity Term W4

2 Oh what a time it is when summer come to the city and all them girls throw away heavy winter coat and wearing light summer frocks so you could see the legs and shapes that was hiding away from the cold blasts and you could coast a lime in the park and [ ] they would sit on the benches and smile everywhere you turn the people smiling isn t it a lovely day as if the sun burn away all the tightness and strain that was in their faces for the winter and on a nice day every manjack and his brother going to the park with his girl and laying down on the green grass and making love in the winter you would never think that the grass would ever come green again but if you don t keep your eyes open it look like one day the trees naked and the next day they have clothes on sometimes walking you could look on a winter day and see how grim the trees looking and a sort of fog in the distance though right near to you you ain t have no fog but that is only deceiving because if somebody down the other side look up by where you are it would look to them as if it have fog by where you are and this time so the sun in the sky like a forceripe orange and it giving no heat at all and the atmosphere like a sullen twilight hanging over the big city but it different too bad when is summer for then the sun shine for true and the sky blue and a warm wind blowing it look like when is winter a kind of grey nasty colour does come to the sky and it stay there and you forget what it like to see blue skies like back home where blue sky so common people don t even look up in the air and you feeling miserable and cold but when summer come is fire in the town big times fete like stupidness and you have to keep the blood cool for after all them cold and wet months you like you roaring to go though to tell truth winter don t make much difference to some of the boys they blazing left and right as usual all the year round [ ] you does meet all sorts of fellars from all walks of life don t ever be surprised at who you meet up cruising and reclining in the park it might be your boss or it might be some big professional fellar because it ain t have no discrimination when it come to that in the park in the summer [ ] all these things happen in the blazing summer under the trees in the park on the grass with the daffodils and tulips in full bloom and a sky of blue oh it does really be beautiful then to hear the birds whistling and see the green leaves come back on the trees and in the night the world turn upside down and everybody hustling that is life that is the city oh Lord Galahad say when the sweetness of summer get in him he say he would never leave as long as he live and Moses sigh a long sigh like a man who live life and see nothing at all in it and who frighten as the years go by wondering what it is all about.

3 and now the author s identity will be revealed

4 Samuel Sam Selvon ( ) The Lonely Londoners (1956)

5 When the water is boiling he went to the cupboard and take out a packet of tea, and he shake down some in the pot. Daisy look at him as if he mad. Is that how you make tea? she asks. Yes Galahad say. No foolishness about it. Tea is tea you just drop some in the kettle. If you want it strong, you drop plenty. If you want it weak, you drop little bit. And so you make a lovely cuppa. He take the kettle off and rest it on a sheet of Daily Express on the ground. He bring two cups, a spoon, a bottle of milk and a packet of sugar. Fix up, he say, handing Daisy a cup. They sit down there sipping tea and talking. You get that raise the foreman was promising you? Galahad ask, for something to say. What did you say? You know it will take me some time to understand everything you say. The way you West Indian speak! What wrong with it? Galahad asks. Is English we speaking

6 One grim winter evening, when it had a kind of unrealness about London, with a fog sleeping restlessly over the city and the lights showing in the blur as if is not London at all but some strange place on another planet, Moses Aloetta hop on a number 46 bus London is a place like that. It divide up in little worlds, and you stay in the world you belong to and you don t know anything what happening in the other ones except what you read in the papers. As if he could see the black faces bobbing up and down in the millions of white, strained faces, everybody hustling along the strand, the spades jostling in the crowd, bewildered, hopeless. Unreal city, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many. Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, And each man fixed his eyes before his feet. T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land So, cool as a lord, the old Galahad walking out to the road, with plastic raincoat hanging on the arm, and the eyes not missing one sharp craft that pass bowing his head in a polite Good evening and not giving a blast if they answer or not. This is London, this is life oh lord, to walk like a king with no money in your pocket, not a worry in the world. For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so, making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh; but the veriest frumps, the most dejected of miseries sitting on doorsteps (drink their downfall) do the same; can t be dealt with, she felt positive, by Acts of Parliament for that very reason: they love life. In people s eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge [ ]; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June. V. Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

7 Oh what a time it is when summer come to the city and all them girls throw away heavy winter coat and wearing light summer frocks so you could see the legs and shapes that was hiding away from the cold blasts and you could coast a lime in the park and [ ] they would sit on the benches and smile everywhere you turn the English people smiling isn t it a lovely day as if the sun burn away all the tightness and strain that was in their faces for the winter and on a nice day every manjack and his brother going to the park with his girl and laying down on the green grass and making love in the winter you would never think that the grass would ever come green again but if you don t keep your eyes open it look like one day the trees naked and the next day they have clothes on sometimes walking up to the Bayswater Road from Queensway you could look on a winter day and see how grim the trees looking and a sort of fog in the distance though right near to you you ain t have no fog but that is only deceiving because if somebody down the other side look up by where you are it would look to them as if it have fog by where you are and this time so the sun in the sky like a forceripe orange and it giving no heat at all and the atmosphere like a sullen twilight hanging over the big city but it different too bad when is summer for then the sun shine for true and the sky blue and a warm wind blowing it look like when is winter a kind of grey nasty colour does come to the sky and it stay there and you forget what it like to see blue skies like back home where blue sky so common people don t even look up in the air and you feeling miserable and cold but when summer come is fire in the town big times fete like stupidness and you have to keep the blood cool for after all them cold and wet months you like you roaring to go though to tell truth winter don t make much difference to some of the boys they blazing left and right as usual all the year round [ ] you does meet all sorts of fellars from all walks of life don t ever be surprised at who you meet up cruising and reclining in the park it might be your boss or it might be some big professional fellar because it ain t have no discrimination when it come to that in the park in the summer [ ] all these things happen in the blazing summer under the trees in the park on the grass with the daffodils and tulips in full bloom and a sky of blue oh it does really be beautiful then to hear the birds whistling and see the green leaves come back on the trees and in the night the world turn upside down and everybody hustling that is life that is London oh Lord Galahad say when the sweetness of summer get in him he say he would never leave the old Brit n as long as he live and Moses sigh a long sigh like a man who live life and see nothing at all in it and who frighten as the years go by wondering what it is all about