SITUATIONS VACANT

So, you think you know your Pop music, do you? By John Osborne

 Answers can be found on page 25 

1) Who released ‘Crazy, Crazy Nights’ in 1987 as a single, from the album ‘Crazy Nights’? 2) Who is the evergreen performer who declares ‘You're Not Alone’, at the moment? 3) Name the band who had hits in the 60's with ‘Carrie-Ann’ and ‘Jennifer Eccles among many others, and continued to make hits well into the 70's? 4) The band 'Muse' were formed in which West Country town? 5) ‘Blancmange’ was living here in 1982, and Lionel Richie was dancing there in 1986, but where, exactly? 6). ‘I'm Like a Bird’ hit the charts 20 years ago this month, April 2001. Name the artist. 7) Craig and Charlie Reid form the mainstay of which Scottish band? 8) Who were the long-haired lads in the charts of 1997 with ‘MMM-bop’? 9) Name the family that asked ‘Which Way you Goin', Billy’ in 1970? 10) Lyrics: ‘Many times I've been alone and many times I've cried’ (Clue: Beatles).

Worth-a-Guess Bonus Question: How many singles made it to the top ten, thirty years ago in 1991?

Anorak Bonus Question: Allan Clarke was part of which band featured in this quiz?

Great Quotes in Music (126) ‘Music in the soul can be heard by the universe.’ – Lao Tzu (Ancient Chinese philosopher)

Sudoku by T.M.

Fill in the grid with the numbers 1 to 9 so that each row, each column and each 3x3 block contains all the numbers 1 to 9. Solution to March Sudoku on page 25.

The Discomfort of Evening

by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld Translated by Michele Hutchison Faber and Faber ISBN: 9780571349371

The author and translator of The Discomfort of Evening are the winners of the 2020 International Booker Prize. An astonishing achievement for a first novel. The book is set at the turn of the present century on a farm in North Brabant just over the northern border of the Flemishspeaking part of Belgium. It is the Dutch state where Vincent van Gogh was born. The front cover illustration, referencing an original photo by Emilio Blizzi, portrays the self-possessed narrator/heroine Jas Mulder wearing what amounts to her uniform, a very worn red zip-up coat, which she refuses to take off.

Jas is the eldest daughter of a dairy farmer whose family have recently suffered a tragic loss which has greatly affected her. In this, the book is to some extent autobiographical as the author also grew up in this region and her family were similarly affected by such a loss. The Mulders are strongly influenced by the strict Dutch Reform Church which gives them little room for independent thought beyond its teachings and God’s allencompassing influence. Were this book to be described in fine art terms, it would be placed in the genre of the Flemish painter Johannes Vermeer, coupled with that of Pieter Bruegel the Elder and his son. In more recent art, Vincent van Gogh’s Potato Eaters and Stanley Spencer’s The Resurrection, Cookham also come to mind.

There are not many laughs in this book but it is remarkable how the descriptions of the workings of a small family-run dairy farm in the early 1950s in Somerset, of which I have some direct experience, are so similar to this Dutch version 50 years later. The slogan used in the book ‘Milk the cow not the farmer’ has been current since the establishment of industrial scale milk wholesalers and manufacturers. It still has resonance today.

The story is seen through the eyes of the adolescent siblings of the family and Jas in particular. The prevailing grey wet cold atmosphere of the Low Countries, as well as rural poverty, Calvinism and their education, all serve to intensify their mood. The farm is allencompassing and to stray beyond the village is seen as immoral. Much of their thinking is fanciful and curiously obsessive so watch out for the Jews living in the cellar and the children’s relationship with the model cow used for extracting semen from the bull.

The book, although wellwritten, intriguing and sometimes uncomfortable, is not a page turner. The translation would have been improved if an English dairy farmer had been consulted on some of the terminology.