Better drowned than duffers if not duffers won't drown

[Gwylan]

mouse breeder too

and there was the bit about being a traitor too

Didn't want to go quite that far!

 

[Gwylan]

JD

I am assuming that when you go on mastermind your chosen subject will be the books of AR

D

Oh, (insert diety of choice here) the anoraks have overwhelemed a storm bound thread!

 

[Gwylan]

Oh, (insert diety of choice here) the anoraks have overwhelemed a storm bound thread!

Stormbound leads to tedium and incohol consumptiion and a determination in sperring.

 

[dylanwinter]

the anoraks have been crackling for some time on this thread

 

[Gwylan]

Yes, but the tide is rising and I've just got broadband [broad being an aspiration not a reality just here]

But do remain anxious about the unfettered access that Ransom apologists seem to have to this forum.

 

[dylanwinter]

Yes, but the tide is rising and I've just got broadband [broad being an aspiration not a reality just here]

But do remain anxious about the unfettered access that Ransom apologists seem to have to this forum.

that is quite a conspiracy theory you have hatched there

Ransomites get better bandwidth than those who think was a slightly deranged pipe smoking double dealing mousbreeder

 

[Gwylan]

that is quite a conspiracy theory you have hatched there

Ransomites get better bandwidth than those who think was a slightly deranged pipe smoking double dealing mousbreeder

Well that should keep the thread moving for a while. Me, i'm watching waves break over the breakwater, but i suppose that's what it is there for. Put out more fenders and lines. And there's no milk until the morning

 

[JumbleDuck]

Ransomites get better bandwidth than those who think was a slightly deranged pipe smoking double dealing mousbreeder

Is it really so wrong to enjoy the books? What does it matter that some of us like them? I certainly don't care that you don't. I don't even think "your loss", because I am sure that your life has been full of rewarding influences which have passed me by. Live and let live, I say.

 

[dylanwinter]

Is it really so wrong to enjoy the books? Why would you care whether some of us like them? I certainly don't care that you don't. I don't even think "your loss", because I am sure that your life has been full of rewarding influences which have passed me by. Live and let live, I say.

attempt at wit

no insult intended

 

[JumbleDuck]

But do remain anxious about the unfettered access that Ransom apologists seem to have to this forum.

I'm not aware that Arthur Ransome did anything for which I have to apologize and I find it a little hard to see why forum access should be restricted to those who share your views of the man, whatever they are. Or maybe you're just trying to provoke a reaction.

 

[JumbleDuck]

attempt at wit

no insult intended

Nae problem, Dylan. As I wrote before, it would be a boring world if we all agreed about everything.

 

[myquest]

Swallows and Amazons was published first. In fact is was sort of published three times as AR didn't like the drawings for the 1st edition and it had none, the next imprint with "pro" drawings wasn't to his liking and for Swallowdale he insisted on having his own, more naive, drawings, and for Swallows and Amazons as well for the next imprint.

As an 8 year old many moons ago I was blissfully unaware of all the intricacies discussed here and was totally sucked in by the books. I still have the ones I read on my bookshelf and I blame them, not AR interestingly, for my interest in sailing now. As for the telegram I fully understood it back then and have often referred to it in later life.
I have chosen not to re-read my coveted copies as I doubt they will convey the same magic as they did when I was 8.

 

[prv]

I have chosen not to re-read my coveted copies as I doubt they will convey the same magic as they did when I was 8.

I actually found We Didn't Mean to go to Sea even better as an adult, with the sailing experience to fully understand what was being described.

I re-read a number of the others and certainly didn't find them a disappointment.

Pete

 

[Wooden Boat Fittings]

There's a short story (written post hoc and published posthumously) that tells how the children collectively wrote 'Peter Duck' themselves, while wintering alongside in a wherry commanded by Captain Flint.

The story is titled "Their Own Story", and I think from memory (but stand to be corrected) that it was discovered by Hugh Brogan -- along with the commencement of the 13th book in the canon, published posthumously as 'Coots in the North' -- when he was doing research for his biography of Ransome.

Unlike MyQuest, I read all the books again about every two to three years, and have since I was a teenager. I guess that makes me one of Gwylan's "Ransome apologists"....

Mike

 

[JumbleDuck]

There's a short story (written post hoc and published posthumously) that tells how the children collectively wrote 'Peter Duck' themselves, while wintering alongside in a wherry commanded by Captain Flint.

That sounds like the first two chapters in the original draft of Peter Duck, removed before publication because the origins had by then been explained in Swallowdale.

 

[Wooden Boat Fittings]

I rather think it was written as an enlargement to, and explanation of, the reference in 'Swallowdale'.

Mike

 

[charles_reed]

would anyone care to unbundle it for me

http://arthur-ransome.wikia.com/wiki/Better_drowned_than_duffers

D

A pity Dylan didn't use his English grammar and put the comma in the right place.
Of course in cables and telegrams there were no punctuation mark.
Perhaps this will make things plain:

Better drowned than duffers, if not duffers, won't drown.

I'd recommend to Dylan "Eats Shoots and Leaves" as a good book to read and clear away his confusion.

 

[prv]

A pity Dylan didn't use his English grammar and put the comma in the right place.
Of course in cables and telegrams there were no punctuation mark.
Perhaps this will make things plain:

Better drowned than duffers, if not duffers, won't drown..

I would replace the first comma with a full stop, to better separate the two halves:

Better drowned than duffers. If not duffers, won't drown.

Pete

 

[BrianH]

As a child I read Arthur Ransome's childrens' stories, although the consequent fantasies they induced were with adventure in general rather than seafaring ones. They also introduced me to another world, the one of English middle-class values, life-style, speech forms, even names - how on earth could someone be called Titty? Did children really have to leave home to go to a boarding school? Such things were totally alien to this working-class urchin from the east end of London, who grew up through the deprivations of the war years (WWII, that is).

Later in life when I had developed a sailing obsession I discovered an autobiographical sailing account in 'Racundra's First Cruise', the story of Ransome's yacht built in Riga, Latvia, and launched in 1922. The opening paragraph of that book has stayed with me since I first read it as a young man a lifetime ago:

"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 yet to accept the idea of a final resting-place."​

Later in the book Ransome describes Racundra as:

"A cruising boat that one man could manage if need be, but on which three could live comfortably. She was to have writing-table and book-case, a place for a typewriter, broad bunks where a man might lay him down and rest without bruising knee and elbow with each unconsidered movement . . . She should not be fast, but she should be fit to keep the sea when other little boats were scuttling for shelter. In fact, she was to be the boat that every man would wish who likes to move from port to port - a little ship in which, in temperate climates, a man might live from year's end to year's end."​

Replace "typewriter" with "notebook computer" and that is a perfect description of my present "forever boat" - to quote a previous thread. No wonder Ransome resonates with me, if not everything in Swallows and Amazons did all those years ago.

 

[Lakesailor]

Now you've done it. I just picked up "The Life of Arthur Ransome" by Hugh Brogan. Another hour lost