Fact meets fiction

As per the recommendation of one of my colleagues, to whom I mentioned my love of The Luminaries, I am now reading The Signature of All Things. This is by Elizabeth Gilbert, who also wrote Eat Pray Love, unleashing the stream of 'going to find myself in another country' literature that we're still being flooded by. The Signature of All Things, however, is surprisingly good. It is quite similar to The Luminaries in style (although without the astrological references) and setting, with some strong female characters and lots of historical details. Somehow, there is this whole new market for nineteenth century and early twentieth century stories, as also shown by the many new BBC tv series coming out. Which is good for me, because I like both the period and most of the stories.
Apart from this novel, I'm also reading A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson, because someone gave me a book on the Higgs particle and this confused me so much that I realised I hadn't actually read Bryson's more general audience work, so I decided to read that one first. And it's great, of course; hilarious but informative, colourful but factual. I hope I will be able to talk in more detail to my chemistry and physics colleagues after finishing this work.
Now the interesting thing was that in one single day, I read about the same person in both works. This was Joseph Banks, an English naturalist living in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The father of the protagonist in The Signature works for this man for a while, before starting up his own plant enterprise. He is quite a minor character, interesting because he enables the protagonists father to get on in life, but no more than that.  Just a couple of hours after reading this, I read about the same Banks in Bryson's work. As it turned out, the man has really lived, he wasn't someone Elizabeth Gilbert made up.
Fact meeting fiction. I must have encountered this before, but no proper example springs to mind. Somehow, it made The Signature a more interesting book. Some of this has really happened! Funnily enough, I loved finding this out by myself, and would have appreciated it less if it had the 'based on a true story' recommendation stamped all over it, as is the rage with so many movies (and tv series) these days. Also, I would have liked the novel just as much if I hadn't accidentally found out that it's partly based on real people (which should have been obvious because Captain Cook is also mentioned, but that's such a famous name that she may have just put that in to lend the story some credibility, whereas Banks is so obscure that you wouldn't know from just reading about him). It just adds that little bit extra, a dimension that wasn't there before but that makes one wonder about the rest of the characters, and all the events.

I haven't actually looked whether the main character and/or her family are also based on real historical people. I want to finish reading the novel, and appreciate it in its own right, before I look into that. Somehow, it makes it feel like I'm cheating on the author when I check this, also because the 'based on true events' wasn't splattered all over the cover. Apparently, she also wants me to appreciate it without that recommendation. And also, it wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't based on real events, it would just give extra sparkle to an already wonderful novel.

Summer hibernation

High summer, the period when all schools are closed for the holidays and the 'bouwvak' (= builder's vacation) is in session, is called 'cucumbertime' in the Netherlands. We produce a lot of cucumbers, mostly around this time of the year (although actually year-round, since they're grown in greenhouses) and apparently this is the only actual interesting piece of news in summer. 'Cucumbertime' denotes the time that nothing really happens, parliament isn't in session, most people are away on holiday, and we can all fall into a pleasant slumber while the German tourists take over our coastline and the Asian tourists take over everything else.
This year, we went on holiday really early, in the beginning of June, so we get to experience the whole cucumber event for the full length. And it is really true. Nothing really happens. People are contently slow, waking up late, going to bed early, doing nothing much in between. Except when you have to go to work of course, which I still have to do most days, but even there it is really quiet, a maximum of 20 emails a day, lots of time to catch up with colleagues or get down to annoying-and-lengthy-but-still-important tasks you couldn't find time for in the rest of the year. But you go home a bit earlier, do less when you actually are home, go to bed early and sleep badly because of the heat. And then repeat, until some time mid-August when the whole country suddenly snaps awake again (already, my work agenda has been filling up from the 20th of August down right until the beginning of October).

But this year, it's different. This year, a plane was shot down, and the whole country has been in a state of bewilderment and shock for about a week now. The most trivial facts suddenly become massively important, with the major news outlet sending out push messages whenever our king or prime minister utters a few words in public. Also, news reporters are reporting more about their own personal experiences on their respective sites, than that they're doing much actual reporting. And everybody has to know everything about everything that happened and everybody who was affected and it's like there is nothing else happening in the world but bodies being found and moved and put into trains and trains moving to other cities and bodies being put into air planes and air planes flying to the Netherlands and bodies being put into cars and cars going some place where they will finally identify said bodies. That, and the Tour the France, of course.

Somehow, it all feels like cucumbertime squared. It's just so many tiny details that in ordinary life are important to no one but are now suddenly massive news. It's not about the politics behind this, or the war, or about the humanity, it's all about the little details. The vox pop, the human side of things. Interviewing anyone and everyone remotely connected to aviation, the military, the deceased, etcetera. It's like we're still not realising that this year, there will be no pleasant summer slumber, this year, something really happened, something massively important, and that we should pay attention. To the big things, the times in motion, not the small details. It's like they're still wanting to speak to the lady who just learnt to double park her caravan, while that same caravan has just been shot down by tent salespeople. Or some other weird analogy.

In any case, it feels pretty surreal, and maybe the best thing to do is to return to our summer hibernation and return when the world has somehow been patched together again. And we will be able to process this as normal news, in the normal way. Which is not to disregard anyone's feelings in this thing, it's just an observation on the way news travels and is digested in these long, slow summer months.

Garden update (2)

So last time around it took a while for a 'garden update'  to appear, but this time I'm going to keep all of you posted. Because a lot has been happening in our garden, much of it good, some of it less good.

One of the not-so-happy things is the fact that a looot of slugs have chosen to call our garden home. And they have an appetite. Strangely enough, they're also eating the leafs on the potato, which I thought would make them sick but somehow only seems to make them bigger slugs. Otherwise, they love eating fresh strawberries, especially during the night when they're just doing their final ripening before we take them off. And also young courgette and pumpkin plants, with their tiny leafs just coming out, are wonderful food.
The good thing is that we did have strawberries, and several other edible things actually growing. The only thing that failed massively were the carrots, of which exactly 3 showed some fizzy leaf, which then disappeared after a while (whether the slugs were involved, we don't know, it may be that they're just unhappy growing on our clay soil). But we've had a loooot of strawberries, which in true strawberry fashion were ripe during Wimbledon, so it's been a week since we had the last ones. Otherwise, we've had some broccoli, and the leeks are really starting to become proper leeks. We've eaten some already and are going to have to eat the rest of them soon before they start flowering and become inedible.


Our apple tree also did surprisingly well, its little branches laden with apples. Every rain storm or gust of wind I'm afraid the weight of the apples will break the branches, but so far it's holding up pretty good. Then there are the aforementioned potatoes, and we've gotten a new batch of courgette and pumpkin plants for a do-over. We're also having a pepper plant (one small pepper already growing away) and an aubergine plant, which doesn't really seem to be doing a lot. And both of our berry plants are still completely without leafs, but we do have a lot of butterflies around from the caterpillars that ate all those leafs, so I guess it's been good for something.
In the non-veg area our thyme plant has been eaten twice, we just put in the second reserve in the hope that this one will survive. Most of our other plants are doing really well, especially the butterfly-bush, which is attracting a lot of bees, butterflies, and other nectar-loving insects. Sadly, it's also attracting our little neighbour girl, who likes to pull off the flowers because they smell so nice. But all in all the garden is doing a lot better than I expected, given the lack of sun, abundance of rain, and lack of attention from us. We'll see if the potatoes, peppers, apples, courgettes, pumpkins and aubergines turn out to be any good later in the year. For now, it's most used to enjoy the wonderful weather we've been having.

PS: I was going to add some photos, but my computer is being especially difficult tonight, so pics still to come.