Arthur Mitchell Ransome

[JimC]

Thanks Dylan

I'm posting the 100th post to this thread to thank you for starting it. I began as a strong Ransome supporter and I'm still of the same mind having read all the posts, but what posts: we've covered social history, upright and inverted snobbery, the levelling aspects of sailing, masturbation fantasies and revolutionary Russia to name but a few, and in styles from the learned to the locker room.

I'll be following your youtube narrative up the East coast and hope you'll eventually work your way round to my own backyard of Morecambe Bay. You'll find plenty of scope for drying-out and taking moody half-tide landscape sequences. Just don't wander too far from the boat.

 

[VO5]

They are upper class and spoilt, but that's how folk who went sailing in them days were.

I like the fact that they went off on their own and there wasn't a bogey man behind every tree "out to get them" and all adults are surrogate parents, but in Bob World where I come from that's how it should be.

With apologies for interjecting at this stage, but what does Bob World mean, please ?

 

[Phoenix of Hamble]

In one of my recent videos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLxIMeravxM

I said a few less than complimentary things about the pipe smoking literary giant AR


"But here’ s a confession – one that will go down very badly with the locals because Ransome is a bit of hero to many of them.

I have tried to read his stuff - I really have tried – but even as book devouring 9 year old I would get 100 pages in ,put the book down and could never quite find the strength to pick it up again.
His swallows and amazons are even wetter and more annoyingly stuck up than Enid Blytons famous five"



Blimey I have ruffled a few feathers


I wonder if I stand alone

this could be our Spartacus moment

[sarcasm mode]Ah, but if only everyone could appreciate the brilliance of Tolstoy and Joyce to name but two, then we'd all be happier....[/sarcasm mode]... i'm afraid I lose any respect for literary anlysis when I try to read books such as Ulysees or Finnegans Wake.... utter rubbish design to promote superiority and prove intellect, rather than enjoyment.... give me a good dose of AR over that waste of paper anytime!

Ding ding.... round 2!

 

[Magaz97]

I live in Scotland, dammit. It's cold, dark, wet and windy and my nice new boat is three hundred miles away. I'm disbloodygruntled and I don't see why anyone else should be happy. So there.

Anyway, I'm not the one who started a thread to piss over a popular and inspiring author.

LOL...that explains it...I think. My wife is from Scotland. She can have a similar outlook!.... I have to ask. Why is your boat 300 miles away?

 

[Greenwichman]

Dylan - you just stirring?

I don't believe you aren't a fan of AMR.

Your provocative post is really to disguise the fact that you have a deep admiration for an author who has inspired generations of families to become sailors. Go on, admit it!

What's not to like about the books? Kids (of all ages) mucking about in boats .... not a 'health and safety' notice in sight .... no adults getting in the way of a good imagination .... who cares what their daddy did?

All that tosh about class war and posh values ..... Sigh! Just another cover story for the reality: like the rest of us you love boats of all kinds, quiet waters and agreeable boat-people, whatever their socio-economic background.

Hope so, because anyone who does such brilliantly evocative videos can't be someone unlikeable; or seriously ill at ease with AMR!

Happy Christmas, stirrer!

;-)

 

[Ubergeekian]

LOL...that explains it...I think. My wife is from Scotland. She can have a similar outlook!.... I have to ask. Why is your boat 300 miles away?

I bought her last month ... in Milford Haven. Off to see her for a few days this week or next, though - may even have Christmas on board.

 

[Magaz97]

Nice one. Hope you enjoy it.... It is a long way. I once drove to Tenby to collect an Osprey Dinghy. Foolishly bought on Ebay following a rather long evening on liquid refreshment. Cost me as much in fuel as it did to buy the boat!

Merry Christmas

 

[alan_d]

[sarcasm mode]Ah, but if only everyone could appreciate the brilliance of Tolstoy and Joyce to name but two, then we'd all be happier....[/sarcasm mode]... i'm afraid I lose any respect for literary anlysis when I try to read books such as Ulysees or Finnegans Wake.... utter rubbish design to promote superiority and prove intellect, rather than enjoyment.... give me a good dose of AR over that waste of paper anytime!

I was going to reply to this, then I remembered this cartoon:

 

[voicilesrosbifs]

publicity

In one of my recent videos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLxIMeravxM

Blimey, is this thread still running? I guess I would have given the OP more credence if his post wasn't accompanied by a convenient link to the product.

AR, corny, dated, unPC and trite, got me sailing, bless 'im.

 

[dylanwinter]

I am amazed

Blimey, is this thread still running? I guess I would have given the OP more credence if his post wasn't accompanied by a convenient link to the product.

AR, corny, dated, unPC and trite, got me sailing, bless 'im.

well since posting the link I have been called some pretty unpleasant names on this thread by some fairly angry people who bring their anger to this place and spray it all over the place... so I learned something there

on the plus side I have realised that there are a lot of AR fans out there and I learned a few things about the man

as for dissmissing the OP because it links to a video series which is being made without the benefit of payment sonsors or income stream.... well I guess there is no pleasing some people - free and untainted by commerce - yet still people get chippy about it
- ah well

 

[reginaldon]

Think of all the people you are pleasing!
God Bless and Merry Christmas.

 

[AliM]

Don't let them get to you, Dylan.

We don't all need to agree, and I don't agree with you about AR, but there is no need for anyone to be rude!

Enjoy your Christmas and keep turning left in 2010.

 

[voicilesrosbifs]

stir it up

yet still people get chippy about it
- ah well

Oh, I couldn't resist it! I shall be sure to get on to youTube and see what all the fuss is about

 

[Ubergeekian]

on the plus side I have realised that there are a lot of AR fans out there and I learned a few things about the man

If you haven't already done so, I suggest you read "Racundra's First Cruise".

 

[contessa26]

I'm not amazed!

well since posting the link I have been called some pretty unpleasant names on this thread by some fairly angry people who bring their anger to this place and spray it all over the place... so I learned something there

on the plus side I have realised that there are a lot of AR fans out there and I learned a few things about the man

as for dissmissing the OP because it links to a video series which is being made without the benefit of payment sonsors or income stream.... well I guess there is no pleasing some people - free and untainted by commerce - yet still people get chippy about it
- ah well

Keep up the good work, Dylan. Keep the ‘keepturninglefts’ coming, I say.
Please!

To some, a contessa26 maybe unsuitable for ditch-crawling, and I may have done most of my recent boating on even deeper craft, on Scottish lochs or across oceans; (indeed I’ve even been aboard motorboats - your disparaging treatises on them are most interesting too!).

But in the past I’ve had my time of lying aground at sixty degrees aboard an old 8-Metre behind Horsey Island, bilge water seeping into the lee berth; I love the suppurating mud-flats, plaintive-cry-of-curlew, shrill of oyster catcher, and all.
I think your photography, sound work and your editing are all great; and I’ve been following your trips aboard your Mirror Offshore since the first. I hope you keep going!

And I for one have no problem following ‘no sponsors’ links, indeed it’s refreshing seeing ‘no sponsors’, or ads!

Happy Christmas & keep sailing, er... everyone.

 

[dulcibella]

Good for AR! We middle-class trots need to stick together, even if we drink less champagne in a year than the average chav manages in an evening. Let's enjoy the contradictions, read what we like (I quite enjoy Ransome), and remember with Auden that:

Time, that with this strange excuse
pardoned Kipling and his views
and that pardons Paul Claudel
will pardon him - for writing well.

Admittedly he wrote this about Yeats, not Ransome,but what the hell!

 

[BrianH]

If you haven't already done so, I suggest you read "Racundra's First Cruise".

Seconded. With that unforgettable (to me) opening paragraph that so influenced me as a young man just having bought my first house.

"Houses are but badly built boats so firmly aground that you cannot think of moving them. The desire to build a house is the tired wish of a man content thenceforward with a single anchorage. The desire to build a boat is the desire of youth, unwilling to accept the idea of a final resting-place."
​

The man certainly brought me to a lifetime of sailing and even now, in my seventies, the memories of those childrens' stories evoke a nostalgia of wonder and excitement at the potential of boating and the mysteries of unknown shores.

All the claptrap of what is politically correct is irrelevant - as a socially deprived grammar school pupil I had to borrow the books from the local public library and never considered the background of the protagonists. However, I must admit I did wonder how anyone could be called 'Titty'.

 

[dylanwinter]

further ransome revelations - was he a double agent?

I would not have posted again - as I never expected this thread to run for so long

but there it was again - floating at the tiop of scuttlebutt - it shows how much loved he was

he certainly lived an astonishing life

having dug around on the web I wondered if anyone can confirm that there is good evidence that he was spying for both the british (agent S76) and the russians while working as a guardian hack

and that the chacter of Captain nancy is a thinly disguised homage to Lenin?


people were worried that his politics was having a pernicious impact on the fertile minds of his young readers

blimey you couldn't make it up

any more contributions from the amazing scuttlebutt

Dylan


Ps - thanks I have enjoyed this little thread

 

[Ubergeekian]

and that the chacter of Captain nancy is a thinly disguised homage to Lenin?

Nancy Blackett was supposedly closely based on Susan Altounyan. In real life a bit of a scamp, and detested the domestic obsession of Susan Walker in the books. However, Ransome said that if he hadn't put in that character, the books would have been deemed far too dangerous at the time and no parent would have bough them.

 

[Ubergeekian]

Seconded. With that unforgettable (to me) opening paragraph that so influenced me as a young man just having bought my first house.

"Houses are but badly built boats so firmly aground that you cannot think of moving them. The desire to build a house is the tired wish of a man content thenceforward with a single anchorage. The desire to build a boat is the desire of youth, unwilling to accept the idea of a final resting-place."
​

I'm rereading it, but slowly, to savour the flavour. It's an amazing book - partly superb sailing writing but also a wonderful and sympathetic account of a world which vanished totally in WW2. The section about the old man and the unfinished schooner is truly beautiful - a strange, dreamlike chapter which has haunted me for decades since I read it first.

However, I must admit I did wonder how anyone could be called 'Titty'.

"Letitia", I always presumed. I have met one of those, but she was French.