Death on a Texan Plain

The title I thought of years ago but never got round to writing the book. The problem is, I’m no Larry McMurtry Nor did I grow up in a house or city devoid of books.

Larry McMurtry, on the other hand, grew up in a house that had no books and in a town that had no library. And no Kindle then to cushion the blow. Perhaps in response to that, he died leaving behind a private collection of 28,000 books and a further 400,000 books homed in 4 warehouses in Archer City.

In his words: “Forming that library and reading it is surely one of the principal achievements of my life.”(Memoir, Book.) This from a man who found time to write the Lonesome Dove  quadrilogy and many more before that; his second novel, Horseman, Pass By was turned into the film Hud; his third novel The Last Picture Show into the film of that name, similarly, a later novel Terms of Endearment. He also developed a sideline as a script editor, sharing an Oscar for his work on Brokeback Mountain.

And yet for all that, he concluded: “Little of my work in fiction is pedestrian, but, on the other hand, none of my work is really great.”

He offered a similarly downbeat description of his hometown, Archer City: “Simply put, it is not a nice town.” And was even more disparaging about the larger towns in north-central Texas, Wichita Falls, Lubbock and Amarillo. For me, they have wonderfully evocative names; not for Larry McMurtry: “I have always found them uniformly graceless and unattractive. In summer they are hot and dry, in winter cold, dusty and windswept; the population is rigidly Protestant on the surface and underneath seethes with imperfectly repressed malice.”

For all that, he is one of Texas’s favourite sons. The book remains so popular in the Lone Star state that the director of the TV series Lonesome Dove felt: “the whole of Texas was looking over my shoulder. … In Texas, Lonesome Dove is like the Bible.” Which makes it all the more surprising that a tone deaf Republican politician Jared Paterson opined that Texas schools “might need to ban Lonesome Dove,” because of its sexual content, though admitting he himself had never read it. To see what happened next read  here 

For me too, it is the bible of the ‘old west,’ a Tardis that takes you there and back in time for tea.

The entire quadrilogy:  Lonesome Dove, Dead Man’s Walk, Comanche Moon, and the Streets of Laredo are some of the finest books I have ever read and without doubt the most evocative westerns you are ever likely to read. My tragedy is, I can never re-read a book for fear of disturbing the magic. I’m content to keep it lingering hot in the mind. 

No Pheidippides, I

But I used to be a pretty good walker. To me, walking was simple, required little effort and allowed the brain to wander. It is best summed up in the Willie Dixon Song Walking the Blues. Part of me urges you to read no further but just listen to the link and chill. You can of course do both. 

In 1982 I walked down the Grand Canyon and more importantly up again in a day, a round trip of about twenty miles. A few years before that, I walked the Lyke Wake walk, a trip of 40 miles from Osmotherly to Ravenscar. That too was done in a day and all I remember is the pain, rain-swept moors and sheep. Winding down, a little later I walked from Liverpool to Preston in a day for a bet. 4

This preamble is not so much boasting but regret for things past. Since Christmas, I’ve suffered from severe muscle inflammation, a by-product of —so far —very effective treatment; so no complaints there, just as I said, a sense of regret for what I can no longer do. 

Since Christmas, there have been trips and adventures here and there, but most of my days are limited to getting up and either sitting in front of a computer screen or sitting here in front of a window with tantalising views. 

In other words, I’ve become alarmingly sedentary with a view that all the time reminds me of what I’m missing.

In the picture above, the  ridge, barely discernible in the foliage, offers brilliant walking. In the dark mornings of winter sans foliage,——

It offers tantalising glimpses of dancing lights—early morning runners with head-torches, though I like to think them goblins up to no good. In summer, if you walk up there, you can find yourself in an ocean of yellow, distant meadows and trees.

If that doesn’t grab your fancy, you can walk the lane instead which winds its way between England and Wales. It winds east and west, up and down, and every approaching turn tempts you to walk on to see what’s around the corner. En-route, there’s a shed that never seems to be in the same place twice. And then at last, you arrive at a natural resting place where once otters were seen playing, unfortunately not by us, though I live in hope.

If you walk that same lane in the other direction you pass Vauxhall Fields  just before entering Monmouth. 

On November 25^th, 1233 (St Catherine’s Day) a great battle took place there between the forces of Henry III. The rebels, led by the Earl of Pembroke, lured the royal garrison out of the castle and slaughtered them. 

These photos were taken in November. In the peace and mist it may be hard to imagine the violence that took place in those same fields. At the same time,  with a squint and a slant of the head, it is quite easy to imagine it.

And why am I rambling on such things. Recently I’ve been able to move more easily, last week walking three miles to the ‘viewing spot’ and back. 

But again, we saw no otters.

All in training for a Liverpool pub crawl (crawl perhaps being the operative term) in a fortnight’s time with two new American friends. It took some arm twisting but after two seconds thought, I agreed.

Who knows, there may be a blog post in it somewhere.

 

Dream on Dogs

The C19th brain surgeon and anthropologist Paul Broca, exemplifies the inherent limitations of elevating ‘theory’ over empirical experiment. He argued, that because a powerful sense of smell was an inherently animalistic trait, it must be far weaker in humans because we are rational beings The idea remained unquestioned for many years, though well before that, indeed, until the C18th, doctors relied on smell as much as anything else. They ‘squeezed, observed, smelled and tasted.’ Diphtheria smelled sweet, scurvy smelled pungent, typhus smelled like freshly baked rye bread and scrofula smelled like stale beer. I confess I rather like the idea of a doctor sniffing me, some doctors at least, others less so. But such fancies are for the moment academic. 

The Enlightenment and later Paul Broca disparaged and demolished these age old skills, until now it is widely assumed ‘smell’ is our weak link, the Cinderella of our senses. However it may be, to misquote Mark Twain, the death of this sense ‘has been greatly exaggerated,’ and that we are much better ‘smellers’ than we think.

Yes, the dog has certain advantages, slits in their noses that direct air to the side and not purely forward. The whole nostril is designed for sniffing and, moreover, a wet nose lets it know which way the wind is blowing, should you ever need to know. 

Even without wet noses and side slits the human sense of smell is good enough to detect butyl mercaptan diluted to a concentration of 0.3 parts per million – i.e. the rotten eggs smell added to natural gas to warn us of it. 

Traditionally, the number of smells we could ‘officially’ detect stood at 10,000. Quite a respectable figure, but one researcher argues that ‘We can probably distinguish as many smells as we can colours – millions of them.’

Others go farther, one scientist arguing that, ‘An analysis of data found humans can discriminate between around one trillion different smells.’ How he or she arrived at that number I have no idea. It would take more than a lifetime to count, never mind catalogue that number of smells, but there you go; who am I to even argue?  But this I can understand and appreciate: ‘the human olfactory system which regulates a sense of smell is considerably larger than previously thought and contains a similar number of neurons to dogs and other animals.’ 

The key difference lies in priorities. Dogs for example are superb at discriminating between the many types of urine on a lamppost or tree, but they’re rubbish with bananas. Moreover, they’re not that impressive with wine. A trained sommelier can determine the geographic provenance of wine varieties purely by smell. Urine or wine, even bananas? I know where my priorities lie. 

It is only when it disappears, that people fully realise the power of smell. Thousands of covid sufferers who lost a sense of smell found food meaningless, because taste and smell are so intimately linked. To argue the point, one writer advised holding your nose and closing your eyes to see whether you could tell the difference between ketchup and mustard. They may have a point with ketchup and French mustard. I’m less sure it holds true with English mustard and am not willing to put it to the test. 

Smells ‘directly connect to the brain where memory is stored rather than other senses, which get bypassed through a central part of the brain.’ It is why a particular smell can instantly evoke a memory of times past, a particular incident good or bad. It also perhaps explains the negative effects on those who lose their sense of smell—especially of roses, which apparently aids with memory.

A study followed 2,300 people between the ages of 71 and 82, testing their ability to smell by asking them to sniff such scents as chocolate, petrol, lemon, onion and smoke. After a decade around half of the participants understandably died but those with the weakest sense of smell died significantly earlier. A weak sense of smell is also linked to mental decline in later life. Pass me the smelling salts!

A mouse’s sense of smell may also be linked to memory though I’ve never found one to ask. However, scientists have found that by giving a mouse an electric shock whilst it was smelling cherry blossom, saw its grandchildren suffering severe anxiety within smelling distance of the same blossom. 

So, smell has met its Prince, several in fact. It is no longer the Cinderella of the senses. 

The UCL Institute for the Sustainable Heritage of York University have established the UK Heritage Smell Inventory, where the public can submit suggestions for smells that should be conserved for the future. Ideas so far include bluebells, steam trains and red phone boxes—now perhaps more attractive to dogs.  Other suggestions include church hymn books. Personally I’d go for the smell of a packed Liverpool bus on a rainy day, the smell of the Mersey,  baked potatoes and the smell of Hartley’s jam factory. 

Other countries have the same idea. In 2001, Japan’s Ministry of Environment compiled a list of 100 notable smell-scapes, including the sea fogs of the Kushiro region and the second-hand bookshops of Tokyo’s Kanda-Jinbocho region. Each to their own. In 2001 France passed the Sensory Heritage Law with similar emphases on its own fairly unique smellscape. 

 And finally, to conclude with a real visionary, a man before his time. In the mid C19th  an 'off the wall' chemist, G.W. Septimus Piesse, combined music and scent with his own especially designed 'perfume organ,'an instrument that emitted one of 46 different smells when a note sounded. It never got farther than the prototype stage, but it may at last have come into its own. Herald the day when churches and cathedrals bless congregations with light shows and a trillion evocative smells. Dream on dogs!