Among Others

Miss Carroll was very nice to me, inquiring about my holiday and whether I got any books. I asked if she did, and she did, books and book tokens, just like me. She’s not all that old. I suppose she wanted to become a librarian because she loves books and reading. I wouldn’t mind that, if I could be in a real library, but a school library would be horrible, especially here.

Tuesday 8th January 1980

Book club tonight!

This term’s book for English is Far From the Madding Crowd. I’ve been reading it all day when I have reading time. Hardy’s very long-winded, though not technically as long as Dickens. There’s a horrible scene where a fallen woman called Fanny Robin drags herself along a fence while actually giving birth. I think the rest of the book is too slight to support that scene. The happy ending is like a nightmare—Bathsheba and Gabriel Oak married and “whenever I look up, there you are, and whenever you look up, there I am.” Talk about stifling! Gramma liked Hardy, but I can’t. I’ve tried, but he’s too depressing and too trite at the same time. He makes things happen neatly, and sometimes they’re horrible things, but they’re always very pat. I hate that. He could have learned a lot from Silverberg and Delany.

We’re also going to be reading The Tempest and some Keats. I’ve already read both. The good bit about The Tempest is that we’ll be going to see it in Theatre Clwyd in Mold, a school trip. I expect everyone will giggle and be annoying, but a real play in a theatre! I’ve never seen The Tempest. I’ve only seen Romeo and Juliet, in the Sherman Theatre, with Auntie Teg, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream with school, in the New Theatre. I expect Mold theatre won’t be at the level of Cardiff theatre, but who cares. I wonder how they’ll do Caliban? I always see him like the first fairy I saw here, all warty and spider-webby. I wonder how they’ll do Ariel?

In history we’re doing more of the boring old Nineteenth Century, ugh, all Acts and Ireland and unions. Give me history with some fun in it! In French we’re going to learn the subjunctive. People say it’s hard, but it isn’t in Latin. In Latin we’re starting on Book I of Virgil’s Aeneid. I love it so far.

A nation hostile to me

Is sailing the Tyrrhenian sea

Carrying to Italy Troy and her conquered gods!

Though I think “Etruscan sea” scans better?

Wednesday 9th January 1980

Book club last night. I got there a little late because the bus wasn’t on time, but they hadn’t started, and Janine had saved a seat for me opposite the bust of Plato.

Great meeting, led by Mark, who’s a tubby middle-aged guy with huge thick glasses and a little beard. We talked about the Foundation Trilogy. The best bit was where we all really got into psychohistory, whether it’s possible. I don’t think it is, because of chaos. I don’t think it would take a mutation like the Mule, or rather, I think ordinary people are just as unlikely to keep on track. (You could do it with magic, maybe. But not to the level Hari Selden supposedly did it. I didn’t say that.) Then Wim compared it to The Lathe of Heaven and some Dick books with manipulated history. Then I wondered if you could write a story where a secret society have been manipulating history all along for mysterious ends?

“Who’s been around long enough?” Greg asked.

“The Catholic Church?” Janine offered.

Pete snorted. “If so, they haven’t been doing a very good job of it. They controlled half the world, and they lost control.”

(Janine and Pete are back together. They were holding hands under the table. I don’t know if she’s forgiven him for supporting Wim or whether she’s come around to Hugh’s view of things. I couldn’t ask, even when we were just chatting at the end, because Wim was there.)

“Unless it’s actually a secret inner cabal whose goals are not the church’s ostensible goals,” I said.

“Templars?” Keith suggested.

“Secret alien technologist Templars!” Wim put in.

We were a long way off the Foundation books. But that was all right, that was how it bounces. It’s so nice to be with people who have read the things I’ve read and whose minds go to those sort of places. The idea of secret alien technologist Templars manipulating all of history for mysterious ends—maybe to get people to go to the moon, where they have a cache or something, as in The Sirens of Titan?—is just so wonderful.