Charlie Fenton > Recent Status Updates

‘Asked what qualities a politician required, Churchill replied, ‘The ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.’’

I had previously heard that this book has a go at the royal family, but it seems really complimentary of the royals, especially the Queen. It is clear that she was a good employer and cared a lot about her employees, as well as overlooking certain things that you would get fired for in other positions (like addressing her drunk, for instance).

‘When the spring came, and the days grew warmer and longer, and new life was surging all around in the world that she could not see beyond the workhouse walls, Mrs Jenkins was informed that her youngest child, a boy aged three, had died. She asked why, and was told that he had always been sickly... She asked if she might attend the funeral, and was told that he had already been buried.’

As I have just finished my last audiobook and it was the anniversary of her death yesterday, I decided to give this audiobook a go. I have read quite a few on her and am always interested to read those by people who knew her, but this book has mixed reviews and the author has done some things after her death that are a bit suspect, so preparing myself to be annoyed with this.

‘The Reverend Mother looked at me steadily, before replying, “The baby has been placed for adoption.”
“Without the mother’s consent?”
“Consent is not necessary. The child is only fourteen.”
“Fifteen,” I said.
“Fourteen or fifteen, it makes no differences she is still legally a child, and consent is neither valid nor invalid.”
“But how dare you take her baby aware without her knowledge. It is killing her.”’

‘This is where the pimps and madams score. They offer the child food and lodgings and apparent kindness, and within days, prostitution is forced upon them. The only difference between the twenty-first century and the 1950s is that back then, the children procured for soliciting were around fourteen years of age. Today the age has dropped to as low as ten.’

‘Quite suddenly, with blinding insight, the secret of their blissful marriage was revealed to me. She couldn’t speak a word of English, and he couldn’t speak a word of Spanish.’

‘I sat, leaning forward, elbows on my knees, by an open window, trying to get my lungs working properly again. There were no nebulisers in those days; the only treatment was the breathing exercises I was doing. An asthma attack usually passes in the end. Death from asthma is a new phenomenon related to modern living - indeed we used to say “no one died from asthma”.’

‘She knew she would have to have a Caesarean section, but that did not bother her. She was going to have a baby, and this time it would live. That was all that mattered to her, and she was intensely grateful to the Sisters, the hospital, the doctors - everyone - but above all to the National Health Service, and the wonderful people who had arranged that everything should be free, that she wouldn’t have to pay.’

Recognising the names of places and descriptions of things, like the astronomical clock, from my trip to Prague. It is hard to imagine that amazing place full of soldiers dragging people away. The only place that you get a sense of it all is the Jewish Quarter. Have to go back someday.

Glad they included a note by the real Dita (who this novel is about) at the beginning of this, weird actually hearing her voice in this audiobook, so unexpected. Even though I know this is still a fiction book based on her life, it makes it feel even more real.

'Of course, all of this happened a long time ago and nothing like that could ever happen again. Not in this day and age.'
How chilling that last sentence is and absolutely heartbreaking :(

‘As she walked, Mary could not help but peer constantly out of the corner of her eye at the shawled creature in the nursemaid’s grasp. That really was her half-sister. Her sister! She found it hard to summon up hatred for the tiny body who’d unwittingly stolen her title and caused all this anguish.’

‘It was betrayal, there was no doubt about that. Mary’s own father had turned against her. It was a bitter, bitter blow, and each time she recalled the sight of him raising his hat it made her feel sicker than she already was. But in some ways, things were clearer. She was no longer suspended between fear and hope. Anne had completely turned her father.’

‘She stopped, realising that there was no hesitation in her mind that she was going to disobey her father’s orders. She was going to disobey the orders of her king. But it was all right. He wasn’t himself just now. She imagined him popping, bulging his eyes out to make her laugh. Yes, one day he would be back to normal, and making her laugh again.’

‘I have a theory that all human babies are born prematurely. Given the human life span - three score years and ten - to be comparable with other animals of similar longevity, human gestation should be about two years. But the human head is so big by the age of two that no woman could deliver it. So our babies are born prematurely, in a state of utter helplessness.’

“I don’t think you’re a waste of space.”

I love that Dudley expressed remorse and actually seemed to be worried about what would happen to Harry once they left. I wish they had kept this bit in the film (it is in the deleted scenes). I wonder if they kept in contact after?

‘Mary sat aghast, her mouth open like a fish’s. She had heard him say this before, and each time it was painful. No children? But she was his daughter! How could he say that? She simply could not get used to the idea that a girl did not count as a child. How could he say that he had no children when she was sitting there right next to him?’

This is the point where I wish Harry had been selfish and not saved Cedric. If he had just taken the cup, as I bet most others would do, then he would be the only one in that graveyard. I really wish he himself had taken his own advice to Dobby and not kept trying to save people. The worst one though is definitely in the next book (Sirius).

“Dobby knows, sir! Harry Potter has to go into the lake and find his Wheezy –“
“Find my what?”
“- and take his Wheezy back from the merpeople!”
“What’s a Wheezy?”
“Your Wheezy, sir, your Wheezy – Wheezy who is giving Dobby his jumper!”

Aww I love Dobby and the way Stephen Fry does his voice in this

‘In many ways, it was a battle that had begun on 5 February 1925, when Marguerite Carlough had first filed suit in New Jersey: the very first dial-painter ever to fight back. Catherine’s triumph in court, thirteen years later, was one of the first cases in which an employer was made responsible for the health of its employees.’

‘For almost six years Radium Dial had known the women were radioactive. Yet ‘the knowledge of the discoveries had been carefully concealed by the firm, who feared disruption of their business if the facts became known... the victims had not been informed of their condition, nor the cause, through fear of panic among the workers’.’

“I have had my jaws curetted seventeen times,” said Grace simply, “with pieces of the jawbone removed. Most of my teeth have been removed. [My] spine [is] decaying and one bone in [my] foot [is] totally destroyed.”

“I’ve been so discouraged at times,” Albina confided, “that I’ve thought about taking gas and ending it all.”

That was after losing her third baby, this time through a medically advised abortion (‘they would not permit development of the child’), due to her condition. That’s just heartbreaking.

‘Saturday night slipped into Sunday morning, and Ella’s condition declined. As she lay in bed, her system septic, her head swollen and black, her face unrecognisable, the poison in her body did its worst. At 4.30 a.m. on Sunday 4 September, her death came suddenly. She had been at work painting dials just the week before; all she’d had was a little spot on her face? How had it come to this?’

Now that is shocking. Someone working for the company, taking blood, examining and reading the girls’ x-rays, wasn’t even an MD. He had lied. He was a doctor, but his degree was in philosophy. He told them they were all in perfect health, but was not qualified to know that. This just gets worse and worse.

“There’s a Latin phrase. You may not know it. Ratio quique reddenda. It means, each man must give an account of himself. Imagine mine! The very words would turn me to ash.”
“Oh, sir, you do torment yourself.”
“There is only torment.”