Josephine Tey: The Daughter of Time: Extract about talking shop and 'tragedies'
More on The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey. I keep remembering little gems from it.
There's one point at which Detective Grant is visited by his colleague Sergeant Williams. In just a few words, Tey gives us a very clear picture of Williams. She says that he is "large and pink and scrubbed-looking".
"Williams sat planted on the small hard visitors' chair, his knees apart and his pale blue eyes blinking like a contented cat's in the light from the window, and Grant regarded him with affection."
When Grant shows him the picture of Richard III, he asks him what he thinks of the man. Where would he place him. "In the dock or on the bench?" I really liked this description: "Williams bent forward and drew his bland brows into a travesty of concentration."
I also loved this:
"I tell you, I never knew any history except 1066 and 1603."
"What happened in 1603?" Grant asked, his mind still on Tyrrel.
"We had the Scots tied to our tails for good."
"Better than having them at our throats every five minutes."
For some reason it makes me laugh even though I'm so not across the Scottish/English tension :D
My favourite description though in the conversation with Williams is this though:
...for a little Grant forgot about battles long ago and considered wide boys alive today. It was pleasant to talk shop again; to use that elliptical, allusive speech that one uses only with another of one's trade. It was pleasant to hear the professional gossip, to talk professional politics; to learn who was on the mat and who was on the skids.
I realised I know exactly what Tey means. On the one hand I frequently sneer, moan and complain about just talking with work people and getting sick of only talking to people in the same profession, but on the other hand, there is a certain ease and effortlessness in talking to someone from your own trade or profession. The jargon, the slang, the shorthand, the in-jokes, the abbreviations, the concepts that can be encapsulated and conveyed in just a few short words or phrases.
Sometimes it's nice not to have to explain things - to have people just pick up on the allusion or stupid in-joke and run with it. Talking shop is a dangerous and slippery slope though and very boring for anyone who isn't from the same 'shop'. :D
There's also one bit where Grant is researching Richard III and is given a copy of what is described as 'the best history of England'. The other day I reposted a link to an old article in the Onion called 15,000 Brown People Dead Somewhere and then there's a bit in The Daughter of Time that goes as follows:
"He turned the pages and marvelled how dull information is deprived of personality. The sorrows of humanity are no one's sorrows, as newspaper readers long ago found out. A frisson of horror may go down one's spine at wholesale destruction but one's heart stays unmoved. A thousand people drowned in floods in China are news: a solitary child drowned in a pond is tragedy. So Mr. Tanner's account of the progress of the English race was admirable but unexciting. But here and there where he could not avoid the personal his narrative flowered into a more immediate interest. In extracts from the Pastons' letters, for instance. The Pastons had a habit of sandwiching scraps of history between orders for salad oil and inquiries as to how Clement was doing at Cambridge.
So thought-provoking. Well my thoughts were provoked anyway :D
There's one point at which Detective Grant is visited by his colleague Sergeant Williams. In just a few words, Tey gives us a very clear picture of Williams. She says that he is "large and pink and scrubbed-looking".
"Williams sat planted on the small hard visitors' chair, his knees apart and his pale blue eyes blinking like a contented cat's in the light from the window, and Grant regarded him with affection."
When Grant shows him the picture of Richard III, he asks him what he thinks of the man. Where would he place him. "In the dock or on the bench?" I really liked this description: "Williams bent forward and drew his bland brows into a travesty of concentration."
I also loved this:
"I tell you, I never knew any history except 1066 and 1603."
"What happened in 1603?" Grant asked, his mind still on Tyrrel.
"We had the Scots tied to our tails for good."
"Better than having them at our throats every five minutes."
For some reason it makes me laugh even though I'm so not across the Scottish/English tension :D
My favourite description though in the conversation with Williams is this though:
...for a little Grant forgot about battles long ago and considered wide boys alive today. It was pleasant to talk shop again; to use that elliptical, allusive speech that one uses only with another of one's trade. It was pleasant to hear the professional gossip, to talk professional politics; to learn who was on the mat and who was on the skids.
I realised I know exactly what Tey means. On the one hand I frequently sneer, moan and complain about just talking with work people and getting sick of only talking to people in the same profession, but on the other hand, there is a certain ease and effortlessness in talking to someone from your own trade or profession. The jargon, the slang, the shorthand, the in-jokes, the abbreviations, the concepts that can be encapsulated and conveyed in just a few short words or phrases.
Sometimes it's nice not to have to explain things - to have people just pick up on the allusion or stupid in-joke and run with it. Talking shop is a dangerous and slippery slope though and very boring for anyone who isn't from the same 'shop'. :D
There's also one bit where Grant is researching Richard III and is given a copy of what is described as 'the best history of England'. The other day I reposted a link to an old article in the Onion called 15,000 Brown People Dead Somewhere and then there's a bit in The Daughter of Time that goes as follows:
"He turned the pages and marvelled how dull information is deprived of personality. The sorrows of humanity are no one's sorrows, as newspaper readers long ago found out. A frisson of horror may go down one's spine at wholesale destruction but one's heart stays unmoved. A thousand people drowned in floods in China are news: a solitary child drowned in a pond is tragedy. So Mr. Tanner's account of the progress of the English race was admirable but unexciting. But here and there where he could not avoid the personal his narrative flowered into a more immediate interest. In extracts from the Pastons' letters, for instance. The Pastons had a habit of sandwiching scraps of history between orders for salad oil and inquiries as to how Clement was doing at Cambridge.
So thought-provoking. Well my thoughts were provoked anyway :D