THERE IS A HAPPY LAND - Book review

Keith Waterhouse’s excellent debut novel There is a Happy Land was published in1957 and is narrated by an unnamed boy (‘Told her my name’ (p21)) of almost eleven years of age in the year before the Second World War.  As Waterhouse was born in 1929 there may be elements of autobiography in thisshort novel, perceiving the world from that childhood period: ‘Braithwaites’ (house) had been empty for ages. They had a telegraph pole in their garden. They were dirty. They had to have the bug-van when they removed’ (p16).

The boy lives with ‘my Aunty Bettie’ as both his parents are dead. His best friend is Ted – until they have a final falling-out. The interplay where they don’t speak and avoid eye-contact and befriend others is spot-on.

He befriends newcomer Marion Longbottom. ‘She knew a lot, did Marion. It was her that told me that if you swallow chewing gum, well it gets all tangled up round your heart, and if you swallow orange pips, well you get oranges growing out of your ears’ (p31).

The book title is from a song a lad sings: ‘There is a happy land, far far away/Where they have jam and bread three times a day./Just one big fam-i-lee,/Eggs and bacon they don’t see...’ (p38).

Waterhouse captures the mindset of childhood perfectly: ‘My heart always started bumping when people whispered at each other’ (p51).

Some of the older boys and girls would go off to the fields. ‘Suddenly I felt hot and sweaty and miserable and sick. All the whispers I didn’t understand, heard in the school lavatories and from the big lads, late at night at the top of our street, came back to my mind’ (p84).

He went to the fairground and won some coins. ‘I had five-pence now. I held the pennies tight until they were hot in my hand. I put my hand to my face and it smelled of copper. I was going to lick one and then I remembered Marion telling me that if you do, you get cancer’ (p100).

There is bullying and senseless fighting and annoying spitefulness. ‘... he used to get behind me and try to tread my heels heels down’ (p127).

For the narrator it is not a happy land, but it’s the best he has, despite being involved in a tragedy near the poignant end.

FB – Face Bully?

In the scheme of things, it’s no big deal. I can live without Face Book. I mean, there are children being slaughtered throughout the world, notably in Ukraine, Gaza, Iraq and Libya. Why does the world’s media call the latest incarnation of deranged misfits, IS, the Islamic State? Because that’s what they call themselves? They’re not the true face of Islam. They should be labelled for what they are – Insane Scum, Insane Savages or something more truthful.

Still, I digress.

A couple of days ago, I posted an FB message to a friend on his birthday, and also sent an image of tapas – since he has lived in Spain, and would get the virtual party reference.

Tapas - Wikipedia commons

 

I immediately followed up this with another image, this time of glasses of Spanish wine, for his virtual party. (I wasn’t able to include more than one image per message). And to cap it off, I sent an image of some bottles of cava – Spanish equivalent of Champagne at a fraction of the price…

Cava - and glasses of wine - Wikipedia commons

 

And immediately I received a FB message telling me a security check was required to ensure I was who I was. Great, I thought. I only had one of those last week, and answered the question and received a clearance code on my mobile phone, no problem. So, here we go again. I duly read the capture code or whatever they call it – say, KsFgLi – and input this – and immediately I was informed that I’d failed the security check and would be temporarily blocked for 30 days. This means that I can post to my FB timeline, and share other posts on my timeline; I cannot send PMs and I cannot comment on my own posts or anyone else’s anywhere on FB. No court of appeal, no best of three attempts at the code. As far as they’re concerned, I’ve fallen foul of their rules. Yeah, right.

In retrospect, it’s obvious to me that I mis-read the code, which isn’t surprising since often they are quite indecipherable; the point is, I didn’t feel unsure about the code, so I input what I thought I read.

Why am I bothering to write this? I’ll just have to wait out the 30 days, surely. Yes, I suppose I will. I was going to attend some FB friends’ virtual book launches, but that’s not possible now. There were other FB contacts about blogs etc I was involved in, regarding sharing information etc; I’ll find a way round that, eventually.

What bugs me is the Draconian approach to the blockage. FB in bullying mode.

Clearly, the algorithm system is programmed to identify any posts that originate from one source and consecutively aim at another source; the limit is probably three; it may be as little as two but I type fast…! It may be linked to images rather than simple text posts. The automatic response is a security check process. In effect, it’s a robot checking to ensure that I’m not a robot.

 
I take issue with the imposition of the blockage after I failed only once at the security check hurdle. Banks’ ATMs allow at least three attempts at getting the PIN code right.

I take issue with the imposition of 30 days’ blockage. Why 30 days? A nice round number. What does that achieve, exactly? If I had been a spammer, then I’d have learned my lesson after a month, is that it? I’d have thought spammers would have multiple accounts anyway. Does 30 days allow me to go to Specsavers so I can get my eyes tested and then better decipher their awful codes? There’s no reason why it should be 30 days instead of 24 hours; in effect this ‘grounding’ is tantamount to treating users as recalcitrant children.

 
We’ve all been there. Authorities impose constraints or new laws because of the irresponsible or even criminal few so that the majority suffer – whether that’s speed-bumps, traffic calming, the confiscating of nail clippers at airports, or a 30-day temporary blockage on FB. It isn’t rational, but they’re the rules we’ve made. Yeah, right. No, at best, it’s lazy programming, at worst, it’s bullying.

So, dear FB friends, if you don’t see my half-witticism comments on your pages for a while, that’s why. (You may even breathe a sigh of relief!)

Tomorrow, I'll look at some fiction that extrapolates on the 'punishment' meted out to rule-breakers...

[Later (26 August): while temp blocked you usually can't see a comment or like so you can't click on them. However, yesterday, on one post there was a like offered so I clicked on it. A message came up, saying I was blocked as I 'might' have violated the rules... but I could contact via help, which I did, and stated my case succinctly, and today I received a response to the effect that I am now unblocked, back to normal.]