Goldfinch

Various minor events at Tooting last week.

First, visiting a proper old-style junk shop in Garratt Lane, probably run by a chap who made most of his living by clearing out houses, I picked up a paperback copy, in reasonable condition, of 'The Goldfinch' by Donna Tartt, for £1. A book which involves the painting by Carel Fabritius illustrated left and which I remembered as having attracted heavy reviews at the time of its publication in 2013, but either a review or the length of the book put me off, and I did not click on buy at that time. An author about whom I knew and know nothing. But now, at £1, it seemed a good opportunity to give it a go.

Onto to Wetherspoons to be treated to various conspiracy theories about the deaths of three prominent Irish Nationalists in August 1922, in the troubled times following the Lloyd George treaty of December 1921. Troubled times which were marked by the London assassination in June 1922 of Field Marshal Sir Henry Hughes Wilson, 1st Baronet GCB, DSO, whose involvement in Irish politics as an Ulster Unionist might have made him fair game during the War of Independence. But fair game he was not at this time, and his death was one of the events which precipitated the civil war in Ireland. He is commemorated by, inter alia, the longest wikipedia entry for a person that I have ever come across.

The three prominent Irish Nationalists were: Harry Boland assassinated by the anti-Treaty forces in Ireland, Arthur Griffith who died of heart disease, a possibly avoidable death had he stopped work, and lastly Michael Collins, presumably assassinated by more anti-Treaty forces, although this death remains a mystery. Some talk of a revenge killing by the British and others talk of a state killing by De Valera.

By way of odd facts, we have it that Boland was at one point the custodian of the Russian Crown Jewels, collateral for a loan by the Irish to the Bolsheviks. That Griffith was guilty of rather nasty anti-Semitism in the middle period of his life. While they made a film, unseen by me, about the charismatic Collins. There was also talk in wikipedia of the Free State army at the time of the Civil War being largely made up of British Army veterans from the then, not long won, First World War; even talk of provision by the British Army of the necessary artillery. The bellicose Churchill was in the mix.

Some cloud at Earlsfield, but more blue sky. A few high tracks to be seen, but nothing at all to be seen on the flight path down. Where had all the aeroplanes gone?

While back at Epsom, the Doddle shop, a place which exists to hold your internet deliveries for you at the station you come home through, but which does not seem to have caught on, was shut. I did wonder whether they had given up, but their web site (reference 1) says open until 2000, while I may well have been later than that. As would, I would have thought, lots of their potential customers. Will they stay the course?

Reference 1: https://www.doddle.com/.