Franz Schubert, 1797-1828

On this day — January the 31^st — in 1797, Schubert was born. He died just 31 years later.

When I first started reading music history in about 1960, the books never said why Beethoven went deaf, Schubert died young, and Delius was paralytic. It was in fact syphilis in all three cases. This might suggest they led rackety promiscuous lives, and I think indeed Delius behaved pretty outrageously when young. Schubert was I think no more promiscuous than other young men of his time, and Beethoven was a prude who had idealistic platonic relationships with his young women piano pupils; his best-known song cycle was called ‘An die ferne Geliebte’, ‘To the distant beloved.’ It wasn’t screwing around that did for them, it was the fact that penicillin hadn’t been discovered. The human race would probably have died out by now had it not been for Penicillin.

Many people, including many accomplished and sensitive musicians and music lovers, think Schubert rather trivial. I think this is, paradoxically, because of his extraordinary melodic gift: people hear the beautiful tune and fail to notice what is going on underneath and around it; the strange harmonic shifts for one thing. One of the last things Beethoven, whom surely no-one regards as trivial, said was that he regarded Schubert as his successor.

Another thing about Schubert was his ‘late’ works, such as the last quartets, the piano sonata Deutsch 960, and of course the great string quintet. How did it happen that such a young man could write works that had that combination of resigned calm and passionate intensity that we hear in Beethoven’s last works and that we associate especially with ‘late’ work, not just in music but also the other arts? I believe that it was actually always there, but no-one noticed: one can hear it, if one listens carefully, particularly to the piano accompaniment and not just the pretty tune, even in such early work as the song ‘Gretchen am Spinnrade’, written when he was sixteen.

Look out: here comes a poem

It’s almost funny to see how the readership of this blog plummets at the mere mention of poetry. Almost. Nevertheless, I shall continue from time to time to put poems in it.

At the risk of exposing an unexpectedly sentimental streak in my character (my excuse is that this was written 20 something years ago) here is an all-too-autobiographical poem. ‘Clones’ by the way is a small town near Monaghan in Ireland, and is pronounced ‘Cloe-ness’.

 

Darkness

Had it been as light as that – as light as when we three
drank whiskey in a Clones pub, and you two huddled, moved
your web of warmth to fold me in your common, unchanged love,
had it been as light as that, you’d still lie here with me.

But how to still the sudden thrill when, through the sleeping house,
− back door, staircase, purple room – a trail of tiny creaks
betrays your shyly seeking feet, your shadowed shape, that wakes
my two-years drugged and deadened heart? Oh, I might touch your face

as gentle as the scarf you wore to keep you from the night,
but you lay in my arms, my dear – my demon dragged you down
where sick and savage hearts can swim, but innocence will drown −
you could not lift my leaden heart to love as light as that.

Simon Darragh, Monaghan, 198?.

 

Pete Seeger, William Blake, and Tom Paine.

Pete Seeger has just died. Fair enough, we was well into his nineties.

Appropriately or ironically — both men were, in their different ways, fighters for freedom and justice — today is also the (anniversary of the) day Tom Paine was born.

In December of 1792, William Blake and Tom Paine happened to meet in St Paul’s Churchyard, so William was able to warn Thomas not to go home, where the police were waiting for him. Paine went instead to Dover and took the ferry to France, and later went to America. Counterfactual history is of course a lot of nonsense, but it is disturbing to imagine what might have happened or not happened had that meeting not taken place. A recent book — ‘Blake’s Agitation’ by Steven Goldsmith — casts doubt on Blake’s personal engagement in political action, (though his later influence on libertarian politics could hardly be denied). That day in the churchyard however, wittingly or not, Blake did something of great political significance.

Even Voice of America, which slavishly follows the views of the American Government, devoted several minutes of its morning news today to the life and work of Pete Seeger, with phrases like ‘Instrumental in the revival of American Folk Music’. Seeger having been a friend of Woody Guthrie it was not so much a revival as a continuation. VoA played snatches of several of his songs, and even mentioned his persecution during the McCarthy era. One song they didn’t play was his simple funny one mocking the Murcan Way of Life ‘Little Boxes’.

Today, a Greek Lesson. (Or an English Lesson for Greeks.)

In fact I did this for a Greek waitress who needed to explain things to Anglophones.

Where is the toilet?	Round the corner.
Θα σας το φέρω.	I will bring it to you.
Έχετε ψιλά;	Do you have change?
Τόστ	Τoasted sandwich.
Σπιτικό	Home-made.
Θέλει λίγα λεπτά	It will take a few minutes.
Δεν μας παρατάς;	Why don’t you leave us alone?
What is Tsipouro?	It is like ouzo, only even stronger.
My dog’s got no nose	How does he smell?
Very bad.	(Χά-χά)
Καρυδόπιτα	Walnut cake. (Not walnut pie.)
Το φτιάχνει η Μαμά μου	My mother makes it.
Είναι κερασμένο (απώ το μαγαζί)	It’s on the House.
Είναι κερασμένο (απώ κάπιον δικό του)	Your friend paid (already).
Τι είδος καφέ; (Μπύρα κλπ.)	What kind of coffee? (Beer etc.)
Δεν δίνω δίφρανκο	I don’t give a damn.
‘Cooked Breakfast’ και ‘English Breakfast’	Θα πει: αυγά, μπέικον, λουκάνικο, τα πάντα. (Που φυσικά δεν θα βρούνε πουθενά.)
‘What does Αέριδες mean?’	Breezes (Μπρίζις).
Θα προχωρήσετε ευθεία κάτω	You go straight down. (Downhill.)
Να σας κεράσω κάτι; Τι θα πίνετε;	Can I offer you something (on the house)? What would you like to drink?
Γλυκό του κουταλιού. Έιναι φτιαγμένο από φρούτο	A sticky sweet. It’s made from fruit.
Σπιτικό γλυκό	Home-made sweet.
Πρέπει να το κρατήσω ακίνητο	I have to keep it still. (Τι;)
Καπνιστός τόνο, φτιαγμένος στην Αλόννησο	Smoked tuna, made in Alonnisos.
Λυπάμαι αλλά δεν έχω. Έχει ήδη τελειώσει	Sorry but we don’t have any – it’s all gone.
Παρακαλώ, τι θα θέλετε;	Yes please, what would you like?
Βυσσινάδα (σπιτική) με ολόκληρα βύσσινα	Home-made cherryade with whole cherries.
Δεν έχω πολύ μυαλό, έιμαι ταπεινή σερβιτόρα	I’m not very clever, I’m just a humble waitress.

 

The Mysterious Tale of the Travelling Tombstone

The Jewish museum in Hamburg has had for many years in its collection half the grave stone of a prominent eighteenth-century Rabbi, who had been buried in the Jewish cemetery in the centre of the city. No prizes for guessing how the stone got broken, but what happened to the other half? Surely even the most enthusiastically anti-Semitic  Nazi wouldn’t carry off half a gravestone as a trophy? The other half finally turned up only a few years ago, miles away in the sand and mud at the mouth of the River Elbe. Mysteriouser and Mysteriouser.

What had happened was that after the Second World War, during which Hamburg had been pretty much flattened by allied bombing, the vast amounts of rubble was taken out there to strengthen the sea defences. Sea erosion, aided by a quite recent hurricane, has turned up all sorts of interesting and disturbing things, including even gas-powered street-light standards, that had once been in Hamburg and are now in the Elbe estuary mud.

'Classical' Music

Not long ago the Greek Government noticed that the latest cuts in numbers of public employees demanded by Angela Merkel ‘happened’ to coincide exactly with the number of people ‘working’ for the state broadcasting service. (Fair enough, some of them did indeed work, but most neither knew nor cared about broadcasting and sat around drinking coffee; they had got their jobs because auntie Eleni was screwing the director of coffee-breaks or whatever.) So in its infinite wisdom the Greek Government simply closed down the entire public broadcasting service, and we had the unprecedented situation of Greece’s becoming just about the only country in the world, including the ‘Third World’, without a state broadcasting service.

I used to listen to Trito Programma, the ‘Classical’ music channel, a lot. I put ‘Classical’ in quotation marks because although we all use the term we would none of us find it easy to define. It certainly doesn’t mean ‘Music of the Classical era’; it runs all the way from pre-Renaissance liturgical chant to the noises, or absences of noise, of Glass and Cage. One definition might be ‘Music that is carefully and accurately written down, and played as carefully and accurately.’ Another might be ‘The stuff that makes most people groan and reach for the knob to find some undemanding audible wallpaper.’ A feature of ‘Classical’ music is that one listens to it. Or not, as the case may be.

Trito Programma had its faults. The mixer operator would simply turn the compression and limiter controls up full and then go out for coffee again, so that double-forte orchestral tuttis actually came out quieter than flute solos, and worst of all the presenters had vast egos and loved the sound of their own voices, so would demonstrate their musical expertise by reading out, with wild mispronunciations, the backs of CD boxes, then perhaps fade in the music a few seconds late as if it were mere background music. But it was nevertheless a lot better than no broadcast ‘serious’ music. Then, suddenly one afternoon at about three, there was no more Trito Programma or any other state channel.

But this morning, having rigged up some sort of external aerial, I trawled through the FM band and heard some late nineteenth century orchestral music which I couldn’t identify. It might have been Tchaikovsky, or perhaps Mahler in one of his vulgar tea-shoppe moods. It might at times have been, God help us, one of the Johann Strausses. I hoped for an explanatory announcement at its end, but got instead the once-familiar Trito Programma call sign, with a list of frequencies, before the announcer, without telling us what we had heard or what we were about to hear, put on a CD of late baroque fortepiano concerti.

Reception of this station here in Alonnisos is not brilliant. You can find it not at the announced frequencies but at 102.9 MHz. You will probably have to press the ‘Mono’ button as the stereo signal, needing more bandwidth, breaks down into distortion and hisses. But it’s great to have Trito Programma again, and an improvement is that they can evidently no longer afford smart-arse presenters but just play the music.  

Davos Schmavos

The ‘World Economic Forum’ is a yearly event at which the very rich gather to display their riches and exchange conscience-soothing specious arguments to show that their being thousands of times richer than the next person is somehow good for the next person. This year some commentators have been disappointed that ‘only’ 16% of the delegates are women. I am disappointed that it is that many. The disgusting sickness of amassing more wealth than one needs and then showing off seems to me very male. True, there have always been exceptions: the morally imbecilic such as Margaret Thatcher and Angela Merkel, and the many who think that ‘Equality’ means doing all the things, however revolting, that have hitherto been done almost exclusively by men.

That’s all for today. Surely this post at least should provoke some comment?

The Great Wurlitzer Disaster

When I lived near the seaside town of Lee-on-Solent I had an aged piano teacher who, like others I have had, spent as much time telling me incidents from his very interesting life as teaching me piano. (No wonder I still can’t play very well.) One of his fingers was oddly splayed at the tip: it had been crushed under a rifle butt in the First World War and the doctor had wanted to amputate it, but he had begged him not to.

He had worked as a cinema pianist in the silent film era: a difficult job; the pianist had to crane upwards and sideways to follow the film while improvising an accompaniment, tacking together phrases from popular pieces and always ready to change mood to match the action or lack of it. When the talkies came in the management of the cinema installed a Wurlitzer organ: one of those vast electric organs whose console, concealed in the orchestra pit, would rise in a blaze of coloured lights, organist already playing, on a hydraulic column in front of the screen. His job now was to play a medley of popular songs, with plenty of use of the bizarre special effects like train whistles and cow moos that were a feature of the Wurlitzer, during the interval. Then he was free until the end of the evening, when he had to play the National Anthem while the audience rose to attention. (Ah, those were the days.)

Naturally, between the end of the interval and the end of the main feature he would slip over the road to the pub. A slight miscalculation of the length of the main film was his undoing: one night he had had one or two too many, but nevertheless dashed back to the cinema and crept into his place at the organ console down in the pit. Noticing that the film still had about half an hour to run, he dozed off. And in his sleep he slumped sideways, leaning on the lever that set the hydraulic gear running. The console rose, concealing the screen just as the film was reaching its dramatic climax. The indignant cries of the audience failed to wake him, the film had to be abandoned, and only with great difficulty was my piano teacher got down again. End of job.

Poetry and Verse

In connection with Byron I mentioned the distinction between poetry and verse. Many people might disagree with what follows (if they read it): this is what I think; how I use the two terms.

Poetry is the essence, the distillation, of language: a poem is a single malt as opposed to the good claret of an essay by Thomas de Quincey or the Watney’s Red Barrel of Frederick Forsyth. In poetry, words are chosen not just for their denotations but also for their connotations, their length and sound, their stresses, their possible rhymes of course, and even for their shapes on the page. (And that last is not a new idea: George Herbert was doing it 400 years ago.)

Much poetry is written in verse, but not all verse is poetry. Verse is just words, almost prose, arranged in lines with some sort of rhythm and often rhyme. I don’t think poetry in the sense I’m using the word can be sustained for more than a page, unless one is Rilke and possessed by Angels. Most poets, even good ones, degenerate into mere verse when they try to write long poems.

Here are two examples from Tennyson’s very long (40 pages in a small print edition) poem ‘Maud’. For the first, so as not to be too selectively unfair, I have deliberately avoided the many highly ‘romantic’ episodes in the story and taken an ‘ordinary’ bit about people going home after a party:

 

Now half to the setting moon are gone,
            And half to the rising day;
Low on the sand and loud on the stone
            The last wheel echoes away.

 

That is one of the places where the huge farrago of verse that is ‘Maud’ rises to the level of Poetry.  Now a couplet a page or two away from that verse:

 

Her brother is coming back tonight,
Breaking up my dream of delight.

 

That is dire; it wouldn’t get past the editor of the South Norwood Amateur Poets’ magazine. Tennyson could only get away with it because he was Poet Laureate. Well, I’m not sure he had yet been awarded the laureateship (often the kiss of death to a poet) when he wrote ‘Maud’, but he was a big deal and had written some very fine poetry. That couplet might be verse; poetry it aint.

Two Birthdays

Today, the 22^nd of January, is, or are, or would have been (Oh you know what I mean) the birthday(s) of Francis Bacon and George Gordon, Lord Byron. Two people about whom there are misconceptions.

Francis Bacon (not the painter, the other one) gets called things like ‘The Father of Modern Science.’ But he wasn’t a scientist, and not just because the word had not yet been coined. ‘Philosopher’ would be nearer the mark, and in those days people whom we should now call scientists were called philosophers. Later those kinds of philosophers became known as ‘Natural Philosophers’. Francis Bacon rarely if ever ‘did’ what we should now call science: experiments designed to refute (not ‘confirm’) speculative theories. What he did do was suggest that this was the way what would later be called science should proceed: by observation and experiment. Up until then even those philosophers who tried to tell us how the world actually is contented themselves with speculation, but rarely if ever tested their ideas by observation or experiment. In ancient Athens this led one wit, who had heard that a certain group of philosophers had defined ‘Man’ as ‘Featherless Biped’ to pluck a chicken and toss it over their garden wall.

—~—

Byron is commonly said to have ‘fought’ for Greek Independence, but his fighting was metaphorical; it was in the field of what is now called Public Relations. He was frightfully famous, so when he came out in favour of an Independent Greek nation it boosted morale among those who were fighting, and encouraged Greece’s friends in other countries. True, he did go to Greece and engage in diplomatic efforts to unite various factions who seemed more interested in fighting each other rather than the Turks (so what’s new?), and he liked to swan around in various forms of Greek costume, notably the Souliot which involved wearing a skirt; something he enjoyed. Did he ‘Die for Greece’? Well, he caught malaria in the notoriously unhealthy marshy area of Missolonghi and died.

Wasn’t he a great poet too? He did write a few beautiful lyric poems — short concentrated pieces of about sonnet length — but his literary reputation rests on the long works like ‘Don Juan’ and ‘Childe Harold’. Fine literature, certainly, but verse, not poetry.

Anniversaries again

Today is a public holiday, the equivalent of an English Bank Holiday, in the United States of America. It would have been Martin Luther King’s birthday five days ago on the 15^th, and the US government has decreed that in memory of him there should be a holiday on the third Monday in January.

It is also the Anniversary of the Wannsee conference, where the Nazis set forth the ‘Final Solution’ to the ‘Problem’ of the Jews. That was in 1942. The year may seem surprising, because the Nazis had already been persecuting and killing Jews for years before that. However until the Wannsee conference the deportations, incarcerations, and killings had been thinly disguised as ‘Resettlement’ and ‘Euthanasia’ programmes. At Wannsee it was made clear that the intention was to rid Germany of all Jews, not just by deportation but by systematic extermination.

Not a very jolly thing to be writing about, but with the recent increase, or at least increased visibility, of racist attitudes people need to be reminded where such attitudes lead.

Jew Jokes

There is of course a kind of Jew Joke that is told by non-Jews to other non-Jews, and that ranges from the mildly offensive to the deeply offensive. You will I hope be relieved to read that that is not what I’m writing about.

I mean the kind of Jewish, mainly Yiddish, joke that is told by Jews to other Jews, and is nearly always self-mocking; Yiddish culture has a capacity for self-mockery that is, or ought to be, the envy of other cultures. My favourite such joke is one I have known for years, but I was reminded of it by its being told again in a review in the latest (well, the latest to reach me) issue of the Times Literary Supplement.

Stalin gets a telegram from Trotsky (who was a Jew.) Stalin is pleased, as the telegram reads ‘Dear Comrade, I was wrong; you were right: I should apologise.’ Stalin shows the telegram to his secretary (who happens to be a Jew.) The secretary — a brave man, as befits someone working with Stalin — says ‘I’m sorry, comrade, but you have misunderstood. Actually the telegram reads ‘Dear Comrade, I was wrong? You were right? I should apologise?’

Halcyon Days

The phrase ‘Halcyon Days’ is usually used rather vaguely to refer — often regretfully and nostalgically — to a time when things were better than they are now, the sun always shone, etc. It is one of the countless words whose once highly specific meaning has been diluted by careless use; ‘Meld’ is another: it used to mean ‘declare’ or ‘announce’, especially in card games but now, probably because it sounds like a mixture of ‘Weld’ and ‘Melt’, most people use it to mean join, merge, or mix.

Anyway, ‘Halcyon Days’: there was an ancient belief that the kingfisher — Αλκυών in Greek — made a floating nest on the sea in the middle of winter, and for two weeks the benevolent gods kept the weather calm and bright while the eggs hatched. For some strange meteorological reason there is in fact in Greece a period of about two weeks of fine, warm, sunny weather in the middle of winter before the usual gloom, cold and high winds set in again. Here in the Northern Sporades we have lately been having Halcyon Days in that ‘proper’ older sense.

The Aloni

Today, another visit to the archives of 'The Aloni'. This below is the second issue:

That's the first page; this was the first issue to cover two sides. Here is the other side:

If the print is too small, I believe that by clicking on it you can enlarge it.

Raymond Chandler

When I wrote about ‘Genre Fiction’ the other day there was one glaring omission: Raymond Chandler. Chandler was an American ‘Pulp Writer’. That is to say, he wrote stories, most of them short, for cheap magazines intended for people who don’t read much, but want something to fill an idle half-hour on the way to work or in a waiting-room. Comics for grown-ups; thrown away when finished.

But he was a good writer, and a friend (and in at least one case enemy) of established ‘respectable’ writers; he cared about literature and his longer books are well worth reading, and not ‘just’ for the very clever well-plotted stories. He is remembered now mostly for the detective stories featuring the private detective Philip Marlowe, now indelibly associated with Humphrey Bogart because of the films made of some of the books in the ’fifties.

Here’s a poem of mine about those Marlowe stories:

 

 

Detective Outfit

.

The frosted glass in the office door
comes as standard, with the hat,
revolver, double-breasted coat —
but yes, you will need more.

You should find, in the bottom drawer,
behind the typing-paper, carbon,
a half-full bottle — Scotch or Bourbon —
most find they soon need more.

Your first case — ‘Innocent or whore?’
has been arranged. The gumshoe’s art
is not to take these things to heart —
we shouldn’t tell you more.

You must supply the square-cut jaw,
the hard-boiled cynic’s laugh, to cover
that hint of disappointed lover —
no-one can give you more.

 

Anniversaries

Today is, or would have been, Martin Luther King's birthday.

It is also the anniversary of the Great Boston Molasses Disaster. That sounds like a Goon Show episode, but was in fact ghastly: on the 15th of January 1919 a storage tank exploded: it had contained two and a half million gallons of molasses, which had fermented in the unseasonal heat. A wave of molasses about ten feet high flowed through the town. 21 people were killed and 150 injured. Cleaning up took weeks, and it is said that even now, on hot days, there is a whiff of ancient molasses in some parts of town.

Jules Laforgue

No time to write much today; I've been very busy with other things. (Modifying my new oven, helping someone whose house got flooded, inventing a Royal Jelly pump with 'Honey Boy', attending a pantomime read-through).
But I wanted to say that I am reading the poems of Jules Laforgue. Now I speak French 'Comme une vache l'espagnole' as they say, so I'm reading them in the excellent Penguin Classics edition, with a prose crib at the bottom of each page, notes at the back, and a long explanatory introduction, all provided by Graham Dunstan Martin. They really are extraordinary; I should have read them long ago and I recommend them to anyone with any interest in poetry. And even more to anyone with no interest in poetry.

Genre Fiction

‘Genre Fiction’ is the stuff that fits more or less neatly into categories: spy stories, science fiction, and above (or below) all, detective stories. It has been a pejorative term; ‘genre’ fiction as opposed to ‘literary’ fiction. Genre fiction is usually, perhaps always, plot driven: there is a tellable story and we want to know what happens next, whereas in literary fiction such things as character development and abstract ideas are what matter and the plot is just a useful framework. Virginia Woolf is, in this respect if no other, a typical ‘literary’ novelist. In one of her best-known novels, ‘To the Lighthouse’, a family and friends on a seaside holiday plan a trip to the eponymous nautical erection, but it rains and the trip is put off. Later the weather clears up and, in the last pages, they finally make it. Gosh. But that is vulgarly sensational compared to the work of Anita Brookner, who about thirty years ago, to everyone’s astonishment including her own, won the Booker prize for a novel in which absolutely nothing at all happens.

So is there a general rule that the less that ‘happens’ in it, the more ‘Literary’ the novel? I don’t think so. Iris Murdoch, for instance, wrote literary rather than genre novels, but in many of them rather a lot happens, some of it quite sensational. And there are, and probably always have been, ‘Genre’ novels that somehow contrive to have ‘Literary merit’. (Really, what a load of old crap actually: there are good books and there are bad books. Or rather, there are books one enjoys and books one doesn’t.) But going along with that idea for the moment, there is, for instance, John Le Carré. He writes spy stories, but there is more to them than ‘just’ the story: they engage with moral issues, they consider the personalities of their protagonists, they can be taken seriously, they can be called ‘Literary’ novels. And P.D. James’s popular detective stories featuring the poet-sleuth Adam Dalgleish are most certainly literary. It’s no anomaly that P.D. James was for many years president of the Society of Authors. So do we read such books ‘On two levels’? The exciting story taking care of our infantile wish to know ‘what happens next’, while our ‘higher’ faculties engage themselves with the more ‘serious’ parts? Surely not: is it not all of a piece; is there anything wrong with wanting a ripping yarn with, or rather as part of, our culture? Somehow I am reminded of the German novelist Stefan Zweig, who when his wife complained at breakfast ‘You only want me for sex’, peered over his newspaper to say ‘But what’s so only?’

The Vampyre

About 200 years ago Byron, Shelley, Mary (surname kept changing; sometimes Godwin, sometimes Shelley and sometimes Wollstonecraft, unless I’m mixing her up with someone else) and assorted wives, girlfriends, and hangers-on were swanning around Europe, scandalized reports of their goings-on reaching England to the prurient delight of the public. One dull evening in, I think, Geneva, (most evenings in Switzerland are dull) they amused themselves by making up ghost and horror stories; some of them later wrote up their stories. The only one that’s still remembered and read was Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’.

However, at least one other story from the group got written up and even published, in London in 1819. This was Doctor John Polidori’s ‘The Vampyre’. Polidori was nominally Byron’s private physician, but mostly he was just along for the ride. He probably himself paid for the publication of his story: it was hardly the literary sensation of the year, and sank almost without trace. I say ‘Almost’ because I’ve managed to get hold of a copy and am currently reading it. The style has the pretentious verbosity of much writing of the period: for instance, the Vampyre and his companion, when they leave England, don’t ‘cross the channel’; they ‘pass the circling waters’. But the story is short and quite fun; certainly better than the film I watched half of last night: that cinematic classic ‘Werewolf in a Girls’ Dormitory’, featuring the popular song ‘There’s a Ghoul in School’.

No Blog Entry Today

I have spent most of today making an amazing new bread-baking oven which fits into the flue of the wood-burning stove. No, the bread will not come out smoked: the hot flue gases enter the bottom of a chamber just above the stove, and go out again at the top of the chamber, continuing normally through the rest of the flue. The oven itself is a metal box suspended within the chamber, with, of course, an entrance that passes through the wall of the chamber. I have not yet baked a loaf in it, but am reasonably confident it will work.
Inventing, designing, making, and fitting this have exhausted me. I had planned to write something about so-called 'Genre Fiction'. Tomorrow perhaps.

A flea and a fly in a flue:
Said the fly 'Let us flee!'
Said the flea 'Let us fly!'
So they flew through a flaw in the flue.