As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning – Laurie Lee

Venue: Catherine Wheel, Marshfield, May 1, 2008
Present: Will, Neil, Richard, Ras, Mark T, Mark Th, Steve

This commentary is provided by Steve in The Guv’nor’s absence.

The overwhelming view was positive. Here was a short, gorgeously written account of a young man's adventures in the first half of the 20th Century. It was easy to read, although some felt it was a little slow and needed adjusting to (though personally I found it positively pacy compared to Ten you know whats). And yet, despite its relative brevity, Laurie Lee managed to pack so much in. This was down to his way with a well-turned phrase, effortlessly creating vivid images – early morning wetness of newly rinsed Madrid streets; the insane shimmering midday heat that caught him out several times; the apprehension he felt as he took his violin out for the first time to play for money.

There was an inherent fascination in such an eloquent description of a time, relatively recently, when there were still so many connections with a more distant past. Mr Pink (Mr Pink!) mentions the beginning of the oil age, the era that began to destroy many of the quiet back roads and small settlements that Lee visits. Will spoke of his grandfather, more or less contemporary with Lee, who never left his village – a life started just after the Victorian era, and ended in the age of the mobile phone. I felt some of the descriptions of encounters with characters, places in Spain were almost medieval.

There was an interesting discussion of Mr. Pink's misgiving about Lee's 'selfishness': that he took, as a visitor, and never put anything back – at least not until the end of the book when he returned to Spain to fight. By and large the rest of the club had some difficulty making a connection with this view. Here was a 19-year-old, leaving home with a mind wide open for new experiences, soaking it all up. He had his violin, and when he needed money he played for people's pleasure. He paid his way, and when he decided to settle he did start to take some more formalised part in the local community. Bearing in mind he wasn't fluent in Spanish, and was staying in each place for no more than a week or so, it's hard to see how he could have significantly contributed more. And there's a kind of tradition of the wandering artist, that they rely on the patronage of those better-off (eg the Campbells) and the friendship of those not so fortunate to get by, in the hope that later in life it all comes flowing out in a work of art that enriches us all. Which is exactly what happened!

While I was at the bar a point was raised about the slightly worrying predilection Lee showed for really quite young girls – though there was no evidence of anything illegal. At the same time, again, he was very young himself... Subsequent Googling revealed that at this time the age of consent in Spain was 12, while in England it had gone up from 13 to 16 at the end of the 19th Century.

Drink: Fascinating how his experience of drinking in Spain echoed the issue that many raise today about how destructive the British way of drinking is, compared with continental Europe. Richard was able to illuminate the point with several statistics showing how much the per-capita consumption of alcohol had risen in the UK in the last few decades. While in Spain they carry on much as they always have: taking it steadily, eating along the way, keeping going all night occasionally but sleeping well too. Where has the control over young people's drinking in Northern Europe, and Bath on a Saturday night in particular, gone?

Politics: some surprise at how little he noted about the impending civil war until he got down to Andalusia. But again, he'd never left England before and, with no benchmark to compare, perhaps saw nothing out of the ordinary. Some expressed a wish that he'd added the civil war experiences in the same book.

Which takes us to the question of the way the book came about. Written more than 30 years after the event, with the notebooks he took with him as raw material, how much can we take as gospel? And does it matter if he may have been selective in the experiences he chose to write about, and maybe embellished others? Will pointed out that in later life Lee himself was a heavy drinker and I think he acquired a reputation as a bit of a rogue too, so I guess it's quite possible that some passages matured somewhat before making it onto the page. But for most of us that didn't take away one bit from what was a fascinating, elegantly written, historically important and sometimes moving account.

Average points 7.4, creeping into fourth place in our overall up town top ranking!